In his newest film, French documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics, art and culture at the start of the new millennium. In November 2001, the filmmaker became intrigued, as did many other Parisians, by the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats on buildings, Metro walls and other public surfaces. Marker's cinematic efforts to document the mysterious materializations of this charming feline throughout Paris are a recurring theme of THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT.

Filmed over the next several years, Marker's cinematic journeys across Paris chronicle everything from political incidents and protests and demonstrations, to election campaigns, the evolution of French attitudes towards America, celebrity scandals, and of course more cat appearances.

Eventually the story of the cats is revealed. Chris Marker concludes THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT with thoughts on the vital importance of such expressions of imagination in our public lives, echoing the May '68 slogan that "La poésie est dans la rue" ("Poetry is in the street").

"Bracing! A fantasy-reverie about graffiti of cartoon Cheshire cats mysteriously appearing in unexpected, hidden places, rather like the proliferating post horns in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49."—Jonathan Rosenbaum, Cinema Scope

2004, 58 minutes / color / English / Region 1

Includes 7 Bonus Films
A Bestiary (Five short films on animals)
Three Cheers For The Whale (1972, 17 min.)
Leila Attacks (2006, 1 min.)