The protagonist in this film is Orlando, a female American sports reporter in Paris. After an accident, the film investigates how memory, history, surroundings and geographical and psychological uprooting determine our place in the world. There is no question of a straightforward story. If it is reminiscent of anything, then the oeuvre of Godard may form a reference. The sound track comprises fragments of voice-over, direct sound and music and forms an auditory landscape that is as least as important as the pictures. Urban scenes are visual punctuation in a ‘story’ that is just asambiguous in principle as the title. Souvenir is a cinematographic maze in which viewers like to lose their way.The film leans to a large extent on its actors, especially Stanton Miranda (Silence of the Lambs), Kristen Scott Thomas (The English Patient), Melvil Poupaud (Trois vies et un seul mort) and Hugues Quester (Conte de printemps). The computer graphics in the film are by Chris. Marker himself and camerawork is by James Herbert (maker of Scars that was screened last year).Michael Shamberg: ‘I made Souvenir to create an emotional journey for the viewer. The film was written in Paris, where, as a displaced person (like Orlando), I absorbed the influences of the familiar and the foreign, of sculpture and of architecture, and of the European cinema, to draw the story out.’
