World War I broke out in June one hundred years ago. It is now beyond living memory. It affected every New Zealand family, with ten percent of New Zealand's population of one million serving overseas.
(Read more on the Remembering WWI website.)

City Gallery commemorates the centenary of the Great War with an eight-screen video installation by pioneer French filmmaker Chris Marker, inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’. Marker mixes lines of text with moody photographs of wounded veterans and beautiful women to evoke the hopelessness of those who experienced the war to end all wars. The soundtrack, Corona by Toru Takemitsu, is performed by Australian pianist Roger Woodward.

Chris Marker (1921-2012) is best known for his 1962 time-travel film La jetée(1962). His 1953 essay film Statues Also Die is currently screening in our Viviane Sassen exhibition.

Chris Marker is represented by Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

*image (left)
courtesy of Peter Blum Gallery