“In the early 1960’s Chris Marker shifted his focus from France to the historical conditions of countries such as China, the Soviet Union, Israel, and Cuba. Of the corresponding films, the one chronicling everyday life in Israel became for Marker the most problematic. Filmed in the early months of 1960, Description of a Struggle examines the ‘miraculous’ survival of Israel twelve years after its founding. The film, however, prophetically warns that miracles die with those who witness them and that a second struggle was beginning. The title, with its allusion to Franz Kafka’s eponymous short story about the complex relationship between a victim and a victimizer and the narrow boundary between the two roles, anticipates Israel’s problematic future. Following the Six-Day War, waged seven years after the release of Description of a Struggle, Marker pulled the film from distribution and refused to allow its screening. When the film was awarded the Berlin 1961 Golden Bear, Marker noted with irony: ‘It is somewhat comforting to see that even though in West Berlin one can’t talk about China, nor about Siberia - and probably not about Cuba - at least for the moment, it is possible to talk about Jews’”. (Nora M. Alter)
