As a child, filmmaker Chris Marker always dreamed of visiting Beijing. In Dimanche à Pekin, he takes us on a journey through the city. He elegantly interweaves his thoughts and observations about Chinese traditions with the urban banalities of everyday life.

Dimanche à Pekin was filmed over several weeks, but is structured in such a way that it mimics the itinerary of a single day, as if scribbled in a diary. In describing Beijing, Chris Marker understands that, however sincere his intentions may be, he will never be more than an outsider in this or any other culture he visits.  Marker’s voice-over is therefore so obviously Orientalist and deliberately superficial that it serves to demonstrate how it is impossible to go beyond that.  This exaggerated performance puts acrobats, dancers, and gymnasts in the foreground.

Marker departs from the traditional omniscient gaze of the historian and draws attention to the stylistic devices that frame and mediate our perception of events. In this way, he shows how claims about “truth” are always ideologically mediated. At the same time, Marker cheerfully blurs the boundaries between individual and cultural memory by acknowledging that his observations are strongly coloured by his own experience with popular culture, from the stories and books of his childhood to the newsreels and fiction films he has watched throughout his life.