Marker handed me a set of fictionalized posters he had created on his computer as part of his multimedia museum installation, "Silent Movie." One poster was for a make-believe film called It's a Mad Mad Mad Dog directed by Oliver Stone Sr. and starring Rin Tin Tin with the promo tag: "He came to help our Russian allies: the Bolsheviks turned him into a Monster." Another was for a version of Rememberance of Things Past, starring Gloria Swanson, John Barrymore, Ramon Novarro and Edna Purviance ("The first movie where the captions take more space than the image"). With a chuckle, Marker then told me about a computer game he was creating, a parody on other games, such as Pacman. No, he had nothing to show at this time. He also told me about an international computer network, not to be confused with the Internet called Optional World Link that he had just begun designing. When he told me to watch for the initials (O.W.L.), I didn't know whether he was joking.

Marker then offered me a drink of Polish pepper-flavored vodka, which I downed quickly. I pulled out my tape recorder and asked if I might record the rest of our conversation. "No, no," he replied firmly. "No interviews. Instead, if you must write something, use your imagination. Place us on a boat on the Nile. We are drunk. It's your story." He didn't realize that sitting there in a Parisian apartment with him was as exotic to me as being with a pharaoh on the Nile.

Marker was clearly uncomfortable with any discussion about his past, waving my questions aside as if they were annoying mosquitoes. So, I asked him if he was involved in any interactive CD-ROM projects. He told me about Immemory, an autobiographic CD-ROM recently begun, which, he said, played with the subjective nature of memory in a way only interactive digital media can. He demonstrated a rough version, showing archival images, text and sound and a map of unknown countries and islands interconnected by hyperlinks. One image is stamped in my memory: a pile of severed heads, all with Slavic features. Marker said he had found the image in a family album with no explanation or date. I remembered a line from Sans Soleil: "I look at the machine and I think of a world where each memory could create its own legend... Poetry will be made by everyone."

At some point it occurred to me that Marker's encounter with the computer and new media had been inevitable. Hadn't he always challenged boundaries of time, space and place? Hadn't he broken through the restraints and limitations of writing to become a filmmaker? I was witnessing a man clearly free of yet another restraint. I recalled the story of the great Russian writer Tolstoy who, at the end of the last century, near the end of his life, saw the simple, yet revolutionary film of a train bearing down the tracks. Tolstoy is reported to have left the theater utterly depressed, remarking that he was born 80 years too early.