Beyond the Pier

La Jetée - a work of genius

With a bit of time to go before I get started on teacher training and edublogging proper, I’ve decided to post a bit of an aside which is nevertheless is still somewhat related to languages and learning.

So, why Beyond the Pier as a blog name? A somewhat convoluted story involving World War III, a personal love of French and photography, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys ,  the joys of translation and not finding the domain name I really wanted.

While studying French at university I happened across La Jetée while looking for some films to watch as an easy and painless way to improve my French.  In a nutshell, it is the story of time travel in Paris  in the aftermath of apocalyptic World War III.  Survivors carry out time travel experiments as a way to try and save the human race.  Sound vaguely familiar?  That’s probably because Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys subsequent film was based upon Chris Marker’s 1962 short film.  I fell in love with the film and after seeing it had a few moments of genuinely stunned silence.  What captivated me, besides the intelligent and thought provoking storyline, was the format: a 28 minutes long, dialogue free, narrated photomontage of exquisite black and white stills. Read more…