In the end I got to Letter to Siberia, as it seems Cinemateca discovered the print or restored it or something. It’s highly playful Marker, with jokes and cartoons and a beautifully executed version of the Kuleshov effect. The film is a voyage through Siberia as revealed from found footage. It takes us irreverently through the traditions, history, palaeontology and architecture of a region which is larger than the USA and scarcely known. A place where wooly mammoths can emerge whole from the permafrost, where the reindeer is source of nutrition, transport and much more. The film tells us a lot about Siberia, but it tells us just as much about the possibilities of the documentary, a medium that so often feels po-faced and awash with its own seriousness. We might detect the influence of Marker in the work of Varda, Herzog, Adam Curtis and Mariano Llinás, to name some whose use of the documentary seeks to go beyond the talking heads of pseudo authenticity.
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