"The Pretty May," Chris resurrected

Deep black, elongated shadows of passersby seen from above, smiles of cats and an owl stroked like a feline, signature animals of Chris Marker , the filmmaker writer who liked not to show himself. 100% male shouts at the Paris Stock Exchange, the interior of a shantytown in Nanterre lit by a TV showing images of flying saucers, the promise of happiness in a "large housing estate" that has just been erected. Young couples caught in flight, a clothes merchant, and so many other Parisian encounters everywhere, in the street, in the metro, in cafes, all social classes caught, and this question repeated as a common thread: what do you remember from this month of May 1962? Doubled by another: what is happiness, this "new idea" now that the war is over?

As with all cult documentaries, the view of Joli Mai, co-directed by Chris Marker and director of photography Pierre Lhomme , changes over the decades, the eye never stops on the same images, the ear on the same words. The film captured, in May 1962