La Jetée preceded by How Not to be Seen

Director: Chris Marker, Hito Steyerl

1962 / 44min / DCP

In a radioactive post-World War III Paris, survivors forced underground by the widespread destruction hatch a plan to send one of their number into the pre-cataclysmic past with hope of opening a way to a less toxified future in Marker’s massively influential 1963 Prix Jean Vigo winner for best short film, comprised almost entirely of still images. Preceded by How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, Steyerl’s acidic lampoon of instructional films—its title nods to a classic Monty Python skit—largely shot at a desert site housing military photo calibration targets.

“Chris Marker’s La Jetée is introduced by artist Hito Steyerl and paired with her short film How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. La Jetée, a photo-roman composed almost entirely of still images, portrays a man in a dystopian future who is forced to time-travel through his memories to unlock the key to humanity’s survival. How Not to Be Seen, a satirical instructional video shot against the backdrop of US Air Force aerial-photography calibration targets, teaches its viewers techniques for becoming invisible within a culture of hypervisibility. The two films reveal how the images and technologies of surveillance cut both ways: in La Jetée, the recollected images that hold the key to humanity’s survival also conceal the protagonist’s death; in How Not to Be Seen, technology designed to surveil entire populations simultaneously renders certain bodies invisible.” —Thalia Stefaniuk, series co-curator and New Museum Curatorial Assistant

Hito Steyerl’s “Mechanical Kurds” (2025) is on view now at the New Museum.

How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (Hito Steyerl, 2013, 16 mins)

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962, 28 mins)

Q&A with artist Hito Steyerl on Friday, May 29th

Part of New Museum Presents New Humans