artingeneral:

“I’m writing you this letter from a distant land. Its name is Siberia. For most of us, that name suggests nothing but a frozen devil’s island – and for the czarist general Andreyevich, it was the biggest vacant lot in the world. Fortunately, there are more things on heaven and earth than any general, Siberian or not, has ever dreamed of.

As I write, I let my eye stray along the edge of a grove of birch trees, and I remember that in Russian, their name is a word of love: beryoza (береза).

This might be autumn in Ermenonville, or New England, if it weren’t for these telegraph workers, booted like Mikhail Strogoff, going through the motions of shoemakers at the altitude of tightrope walkers. They convince you that you’re looking at Siberia, and it’s not just the local color: the boots, the fur caps, and the peppermint collars around their horses’ necks; it’s the realization, for example, that if one of these climbing Cossacks absentmindedly reeled in his line he’d find himself holding a ball of wire 8000 kilometers long.

This gash in the forest means the city has gone by like a wild animal; follow the wrong trail and you may come to a bear or a tiger, follow the right one and you’ll come to a city.”

An excerpt from Letter From Siberia, Chris Marker’s first feature.

Chris Marker (1921-2012)