PROSA invites you to the cycle "CINEMA QUOTING CINEMA," where we explore how certain short films have influenced and shaped unmissable feature films. Featured in this program are two pairs of works that deeply engage in dialogue: the poetic La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker, and its reinvention in 12 Monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam; and the visceral Elephant (1989) by Alan Clarke, which inspired Gus Van Sant's striking Elephant (2003). These pairings reveal how cinema reinterprets and expands narratives, creating new meanings by translating themes and structures from one format to another. This journey invites us to reflect on the creative possibilities of cinema quoting itself, while challenging our understanding of the relationship between memory, time, and the repetition of stories.

Science fiction was a minor genre in US until the big production of 2001, A Space Odyssey, by Kubrick (1968), but still in the 1960s, in France, it was already being adopted by the great names of Nouvelle Vague. Chris Marker (La Jetée, 1962),Godard (Alphaville, 1965) and Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, 1966), they all saw in this genre a way to freely rethink cinema, namely the conventional narrative structures.

In La Jetée, Chris Marker produces a radical exercise with a powerful result,capable of enduring till the current century. It is the first movie to transpose to cinema the theme of circular time and the hypothetical influence of the future upon the past (already covered in literature, like in the tale of 1881, “The clock that went backward”, by Edward P. Mitchell). La Jetée is a fiction short-film made entirely with still pictures, and thus brings into dialogue cinema and photography. The still image lends to the movie a documentary style, like evocations from a memory – or wouldn’t be this film about time.

The theme of circular time would become the motif of future screenplays decades later, as in Terminator (James Cameron, 1984) and 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995), the work that makes up the second part of the first screening of this cycle. Terry Gilliam built on and extended Marker’s story, removing the part of the “future of the future” but expanding the action in the past (1996, one year after this movie’s release) with a vicious circle, in which the researcher, unintentionally, produces the very clue for his research.

In the second case, both Elephants engage in a dialogue about inexplicable violence, reflecting distinct contexts and intentions. Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989) addresses sectarian violence in Northern Ireland with a raw and impersonal representation. Without explanations or narratives, the film depicts a sequence of killings, highlighting the emptiness and banality of violence through a coldly observant camera.

Conversely, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) adapts Clarke’s approach to the American context, inspired by the Columbine massacre. The film quietly observes high school students' routines, creating an unsettling calm before erupting into brutality. Van Sant focuses on youth alienation and emotional disconnection, broadening the discussion to include the social and individual roots of violence.

Both films challenge viewers to confront the absence of explanations and the impact of violence, offering reflections on the political and social contexts that shape it. With austere styles, Clarke and Van Sant compel us to question the meaning of violent acts and what they reveal about our society.

Join us!

(Curatorship of Sérgio Pereira & Alexandre Braga )