“The past is dead!”

In the premiere episode of Why This Film?, Ron and Dr. Dennis Weiss dive into Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), a groundbreaking French short from the Criterion Collection that redefined what cinema could be. Composed almost entirely of still photographs, it’s a haunting meditation on memory, time, and human longing.

Dennis — a retired philosophy professor and curator of the long-running Philosophy, Drinks & Film series — joins Ron to explore how La Jetée uses form, sound, and storytelling to challenge our ideas about what makes something a film.

Together they ask: Why this film, and why does it still matter — in the Collection and beyond?