On Some Returns of M. Chat: Political Historiography in Le fond de l’air est rouge

Abstract

In his montage film Le fond de l’air est rouge, Chris Marker compiles a heterogeneous array of representations drawn from a decade of global struggles – workers’, students’, anti-colonial struggles, and more. Through the assemblage of these images, the filmmaker constructs a historiography that initially appears melancholic and defeatist. This article seeks to move beyond that one-sided interpretation of political critique through images, in order to identify recurring traces of a renewed hope in activism.