Chris Marker
Encyclopedia
Chris Marker is a French writer
, photographer, documentary
film director
, multimedia
artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée
(1962
), A Grin Without a Cat
(1977
), Sans Soleil
(1983
) and AK (1985
), an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa
. Marker is often associated with the Left Bank Cinema movement that occurred in the late 1950s and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais
, Agnès Varda
, Henri Colpi
and Armand Gatti
.
His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais has called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man." Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker."
. Other sources say he was born in Belleville, Paris
, a neighborhood of Paris
, and others, in Neuilly-sur-Seine
. The 1949 edition of Le Cœur Net specifies his birthday as July 22. Film critic David Thomson
has stated: "Marker told me himself that Mongolia is correct. I have since concluded that Belleville is correct- but that does not spoil the spiritual truth of Ulan Bator." When asked about his secretive nature, Marker has said "My films are enough for them (the audience)."
Marker was a philosophy student in France prior to World War II
. During the German occupation of France he joined the Maquis (FTP)
, a part of the French Resistance
. At some point during the war he left France and joined the United States Airforce as a paratrooper, although some sources claim that this is a myth. After the war he began a career as a journalist. He first wrote for the journal Esprit
, a neo-Catholic, Marxist magazine where he met fellow journalist Andre Bazin
. At Esprit, Marker wrote political commentaries, poems, short stories and (with Bazin) film reviews. He would later become an early contributor to Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema
.
During this time period, Marker began to travel around the world as a journalist and photographer, a vocation that he would continue for the rest of his life. He was hired by the French publishing company Éditions du Seuil
as editor of the series Petite Planéte (Small World). This collection devoted one edition to each country and included information and photographs. In 1949 Marker published his first novel, Le Coeur net (The Forthright Spirit), which was about aviation. In 1952 Marker published an illustration essay on French writer Jean Giraudoux
, Giraudoux Par Lui-Même.
, Agnès Varda
, Henri Colpi
, Armand Gatti
and the novelists Marguerite Duras
and Jean Cayrol
. This group is often associated with the French New Wave
directors who came to prominince during the same time period, and indeed both groups were often friends and journalistic co-workers. The term Left Bank was first coined by film critic Richard Roud
., who has described them as having "fondness for a kind of Bohemian
life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts, and a consequent interest in experimental film
making", as well as an identification with the political left. Many of Marker's earliest films were produced by Anatole Dauman
.
In 1952 Marker made his first film, Olympia 52
, a 16mm feature documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games
. In 1953 Marker collaborated with Resnais on the documentary Statues Also Die
. The film examines traditional African art
such as sculptures and masks, and its decline with coming of Western colonialism. The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo
, but was banned by French censors for its criticism of French colonialism.
After working as assistant director on Resnais's Night and Fog
in 1955, Marker made Sunday in Peking, a short documentary "film essay" that would characterize Marker's unique film style for most of his career. The film was shot in two weeks by Marker while he was traveling through China
with Armand Gatti in September 1955. In the film, Marker's commentary overlaps scenes from China, such as tombs which, contrary to Westernized understands of Chinese legends, do not contain the remains of any Ming Dynasty
emperors.
After working on the commentary for Resnais' film Le mystère de l'atelier quinze in 1957, Marker continued to form his own cinematic style with the feature documentary Letter from Siberia. An essay on the gradual destruction of Siberia's culture and individuality, the film combines footage that Marker shot in Siberia
, old newsreel footage, cartoons, stills and, at one point, an illustration of Alfred E. Neuman
from Mad Magazine, all accompanied by Marker's signature commentary, which takes the form of a letter from the director to his audience. In one sequence, Marker repeats the same collection of shots three times with different commentary: the first one praising the Soviet Union, the second denouncing it, and the third taking an objective stance.
In 1959 Marker made the animated film Les Astronautes with Walerian Borowczyk
. The film was a combination of traditional drawings with still photography. In 1960 Marker made Description d'un combat, a documentary on the State of Israel
which reminisces on the countries past and future. The film won the Golden Bear for Best Documentary at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival
.
In January 1961, Marker traveled to Cuba and shot the film ¡Cuba Sí!. The film promotes and defends Fidel Castro
and includes two interviews with the Comandante. The film ends with an anti-American epilogue in which the United States is embarrassed by the Bay of Pigs Invasion
fiasco, and was subsequently banned. The banned essay was included in Marker's first volume of collected film commentaries, Commentaires I, published in 1961. The following year Marker published Coréennes, a collection of photographs and essays on the conditions of Korea
.
Marker became known internationally for the short film La jetée
(The Pier) in 1962. It tells of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel
by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photomontage
of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. In the film, a survivor of a futuristic third World War is obsessed with a distant and disconnected memories of a pier at the Orly Airport
, the image of a mysterious woman, and a man's death. Scientists experimenting in time travel select the man choose him for their studies, and the man travels back in time to contact the mysterious woman, and discovers that the man's death at the Orly Airport was his own. Except for one shot of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up, the film is composed entirely of photographs by Jean Chiabaud and stars Davos Hanich as the man, Hélène Chatelain
as the woman and filmmaker William Klein
as a man from the future. The film won the Prix Jean Vigo
in 1962.
La Jetée was the inspiration for Mamoru Oshii
's 1987 debut live action feature The Red Spectacles
(and, later for, parts of Oshii's 2001 film Avalon
as well) and also inspired Terry Gilliam
's 12 Monkeys (1995). It also inspired many of director Mira Nair
's shots for the 2003 film The Namesake
.
While making La Jetee, Marker was simultaneously making the 150-minute documentary essay-film Le joli mai, released in 1963. Beginning in the Spring of 1962, Marker and his camera operator Pierre Lhomme shot 55 hours of footage interviewing random people on the streets of Paris. The questions, asked by the unseen Marker, range from their personal lives, as well as social and political issues of relevance at that time. Like he had with montages of landscapes and indigenous art, Marker created a film essay that contrasts and juxtaposes a variety of lives with his signature commentary (spoken by Marker's friends, singer-actor Yves Montand
in the French version and Simone Signoret
in the English version). The film has been compared to the Cinéma vérité
films of Jean Rouch
, and criticized by its practitioners at the time. It was shown in competition at the 1963 Venice Film Festival
, where it won the award for Best First Work. It also won the Golden Dove Award at the Leipzig DOK Festival.
After the documentary Le Mystère Koumiko in 1965, Marker made Si j'avais quatre dromadaires, an essay-film that, like La jetée, is a photomontage
of over 800 photographs that Marker had taken over the past 10 years from 26 countries. The commentary takes on a slightly different dimension than his previous commentaries by using a fictitious photographer have a conversation with two friends to discuss the photos. The film's title is an allusion to a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire
. It was the last film in which Marker includes "travel footage" for many years.
, a protest to the Vietnam War
with segments contributed by Marker, Jean-Luc Godard
, Alain Resnais
, Agnes Varda
, Claude Lelouch, William Klein
, Michele Ray and Joris Ivens
. The film includes footage of the war, from both sides, as well as anti-war protests in New York and Paris and other anti-war activities.
From this initial collection of filmmakers with left-wing political agendas, Marker created the group S.L.O.N. (Société pour le lancement des oeuvres nouvelles, but also the Russian word for elephant). SLON was a film collective whose objectives were to make films and to encourage industrial workers to create film collectives of their own. Its members included Valerie Mayoux, Jean-Claude Lerner, Alain Adair and John Tooker. Marker is usually credited as director or co-director of all of the films made by SLON.
After the events of May 1968, Marker felt a moral obligation to abandon his own personal film career and devote himself to SLON and its activities. SLON's first film was about a strike at a Rhodiacéta factory in France, À bientôt, j'espère
(Rhodiacéta) in 1968. Later that year SLON made La Sixième face du pentagone, about an anti-war protest in Washington D.C. and was a reaction to what SLON considered to be the unfair and censored reportage of such events on mainstream television. The film was shot by Francois Reichenbach
, who received co-director credit. La Bataille des dix millions was made in 1970 with Mayoux as co-director and Santiago Alvarez
as cameraman and is about the 1970 sugar crop in Cuba and its disastrous effects on the country. In 1971, SLON made Le Train en marche, a new prologue to Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin's 1935 film Schastye, which had recently been re-released in France.
In 1974, SLON became I.S.K.R.A. (Images, Sons, Kinescope, Réalisations, Audiovisuelles, but also the name of Vladimir Lenin
's political newspaper Iskra
).
's benefit concert for Chilean refugees. The concert was Montand's first public performance in four years and the film includes film clips from his long career as a singer and actor.
Marker had been working on a film about Chile
with ISKRA since 1973. Marker had collaborated with Chilean writer Armand Mattelart
and ISKRA members Valérie Mayoux and Jacqueline Meppiel to shoot and collect the visual materials, which Marker then edited together and provided the commentary for. The resulting film was the two and a half hour documentary La Spirale, released in 1975. The film chronicles recent events in Chile, beginning with the the 1970 election
of socialist President Salvador Allende
until his murder
and the resulting coup in 1973.
Marker then began work on one of his most ambitious films, A Grin Without a Cat
, released in 1977. The film's title refers to the Cheshire Cat
from Alice in Wonderland. The metaphor compares the promise of the global socialist movement before May 1968 (the grin) with its actual presence in the world after May 1968 (the cat). The film's original French title is Le fond de l'air est rouge, which means "The base of the air is red", or "revolution is in the air", implying that the socialist movement existed only in the air.
The film was intended to be an all encompassing portrait of political movements since May 1968, a summation of the work which he had taken part in for ten years. The film is divided into two parts: the first half focuses on the hopes and idealism before May 1968, and the second half on the disillusion and disappointments since those events. Marker begins the film with the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein
's film The Battleship Potemkin
, which Marker points is a fictitious creation of Eisenstein which has still influenced the image of the historical event. Marker used very little commentary in this film, but the film's montage structure and preoccupation with memory make it a Marker film. Upon release, the film was criticized for not addressing many current issues of the New Left such as the woman's movement, sexual liberation and worker self-management. The film was re-released in the US in 2002.
In the late 1970s Marker traveled extensively throughout the world, included an extended period in Japan
. From this trip, Marker first published the photo-essay Le Dépays in 1982, as well as using the experience for his next film Sans Soleil
, released in 1982.
Sans Soleil
stretches the limits of what could be called a documentary
. It is an essay
, a montage
, mixing pieces of documentary with fiction
and philosophical comments, creating an atmosphere of dream
and science fiction
. The main themes are Japan
, Africa
, memory
and travel
. A sequence in the middle of the film takes place in San Francisco, and heavily references Alfred Hitchcock
's Vertigo
. Marker has said that Vertigo is the only film "capable of portraying impossible memory, insane memory." The film's commentary are credited to the fictitious cameraman Sandor Krasna, and read in the form of letters by an unnamed woman. Though centered around Japan, the film was also shot in such other countries as Guinea Bissau, Ireland
and Iceland
. Sans Soleil was shown at the 1983 Berlin Film Festival where it won the OCIC Award. It was also awarded the Sutherland Trophy at the 1983 British Film Institute
Awards.
In 1984 Marker was invited by producer Serge Silberman
to document the making of Akira Kurosawa
's film Ran
. From this Marker made A.K., released in 1985. The film focuses more on Kurosawa's remote but polite personality than on the making of the film.. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
section at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival
, before Ran itself had been released.
In 1985 Marker's long time friend and neighbor Simone Signoret
died of cancer. Marker the made the one-hour TV documentary Mémoires pour Simone as a tribute to her in 1986.
technology
, which led to his film Level 5 (1996) and Immemory (1998, 2008), an interactive multimedia CD-ROM
, produced for the Centre Pompidou (French language version) and from Exact Change
(English version). Marker created a 19 minute multimedia piece in 2005 for The Museum of Modern Art in New York titled Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men which was influenced by T. S. Eliot
's poem.
Chris Marker lives in Paris and very rarely grants interviews. When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers a photograph of a cat instead. (Marker was represented in Agnes Varda's 2008 documentary "The Beaches of Agnes" by a cartoon drawing of a cat, speaking in a technologically altered voice.) Marker's own cat is named Guillaume-en-egypte. In 2009 Marker commissioned an Avatar of Guillaume-en-Egypte to represent him in machinima works. The avatar was created by Exosius Woolley and first appeared in the short film / machinima, "Ouvroir the Movie by Chris Marker."
In the 2007 Criterion Collection release of La Jetée and Sans Soleil, Marker included a short essay, "Working on a shoestring budget". He confessed to shooting all of Sans Soleil with a silent film camera and recording all the audio on a primitive audio cassette recorder. Marker also reminds the reader that only one short scene in La Jetée is of a moving image, as Marker could only borrow a movie camera for one afternoon while working on the film.
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, photographer, documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée
La Jetée
La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
(1962
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
), A Grin Without a Cat
A Grin Without a Cat
A Grin Without a Cat is a 1977 French essay film by Chris Marker. It focuses on global political turmoil in the 1960s and 70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America...
(1977
1977 in film
The year 1977 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*In the Academy Awards, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight win Best Actor and Actress and Supporting Actress awards for Network....
), Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
(1983
1983 in film
-Events:*February 11 - The Rolling Stones concert film Let's Spend the Night Together opens in New York*May 25 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, the final film in the original Star Wars trilogy, is released. Like the previous films, it goes on to become the top grossing picture of...
) and AK (1985
1985 in film
-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...
), an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
. Marker is often associated with the Left Bank Cinema movement that occurred in the late 1950s and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
, Henri Colpi
Henri Colpi
Henri Colpi was a French film editor and film director.Colpi directed the 1961 film Une aussi longue absence, which is well-known for sharing the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival with Viridiana, which was directed by Luis Buñuel...
and Armand Gatti
Armand Gatti
Armand Gatti is a French playwright, poet, journalist, screenwriter, film-maker and former WW II resistance fighter. His 1963 film, El Otro Cristóbal was entered into the 1963 Cannes Film Festival....
.
His friend and sometime collaborator Alain Resnais has called him "the prototype of the twenty-first-century man." Film theorist Roy Armes has said of him: "Marker is unclassifiable because he is unique...The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker."
Early Life
Marker was born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29, 1921. Always elusive about his past and known to refuse interviews and not allow photographs to be taken of him, his place of birth is highly disputed. Some sources and Marker himself claim that he was born in Ulan Bator, MongoliaMongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
. Other sources say he was born in Belleville, Paris
Belleville
-Places in North America:Canada*Belleville, Nova Scotia*Belleville, OntarioUnited States of America*Belleville, Arkansas*Belleville, California*Belleville, Illinois, the largest US city named Belleville**Belleville -Places in North America:Canada*Belleville, Nova Scotia*Belleville, OntarioUnited...
, a neighborhood of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and others, in Neuilly-sur-Seine
Neuilly-sur-Seine
Neuilly-sur-Seine is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.Although Neuilly is technically a suburb of Paris, it is immediately adjacent to the city and directly extends it. The area is composed of mostly wealthy, select residential...
. The 1949 edition of Le Cœur Net specifies his birthday as July 22. Film critic David Thomson
David Thomson
David Thomson may refer to:* David Coupar Thomson , Scottish publisher, founder of D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd* David Thomson, 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet , Canadian businessman and currently the wealthiest individual in Canada...
has stated: "Marker told me himself that Mongolia is correct. I have since concluded that Belleville is correct- but that does not spoil the spiritual truth of Ulan Bator." When asked about his secretive nature, Marker has said "My films are enough for them (the audience)."
Marker was a philosophy student in France prior to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. During the German occupation of France he joined the Maquis (FTP)
Maquis (World War II)
The Maquis were the predominantly rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance. Initially they were composed of men who had escaped into the mountains to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire to provide forced labour for Germany...
, a part of the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. At some point during the war he left France and joined the United States Airforce as a paratrooper, although some sources claim that this is a myth. After the war he began a career as a journalist. He first wrote for the journal Esprit
Esprit (magazine)
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...
, a neo-Catholic, Marxist magazine where he met fellow journalist Andre Bazin
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...
. At Esprit, Marker wrote political commentaries, poems, short stories and (with Bazin) film reviews. He would later become an early contributor to Bazin's Cahiers du Cinema
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
.
During this time period, Marker began to travel around the world as a journalist and photographer, a vocation that he would continue for the rest of his life. He was hired by the French publishing company Éditions du Seuil
Éditions du Seuil
Éditions du Seuil is a French publishing house created in 1935, currently owned by La Martinière Groupe. It owes its name to this goal "The seuil is the whole excitement of parting and arriving...
as editor of the series Petite Planéte (Small World). This collection devoted one edition to each country and included information and photographs. In 1949 Marker published his first novel, Le Coeur net (The Forthright Spirit), which was about aviation. In 1952 Marker published an illustration essay on French writer Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
, Giraudoux Par Lui-Même.
Early career (1950-1961)
During his early journalism career, Marker became increasingly interested in filmmaking and experimented with photography in the early 1950s. Around this time Marker met and befriended many members of what would be called the Left Bank Film Movement, including Alain ResnaisAlain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
, Henri Colpi
Henri Colpi
Henri Colpi was a French film editor and film director.Colpi directed the 1961 film Une aussi longue absence, which is well-known for sharing the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival with Viridiana, which was directed by Luis Buñuel...
, Armand Gatti
Armand Gatti
Armand Gatti is a French playwright, poet, journalist, screenwriter, film-maker and former WW II resistance fighter. His 1963 film, El Otro Cristóbal was entered into the 1963 Cannes Film Festival....
and the novelists Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
and Jean Cayrol
Jean Cayrol
Jean Cayrol was a French poet, publisher, and member of the Académie Goncourt. He is perhaps best known for writing the narration in Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary film, Night and Fog...
. This group is often associated with the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
directors who came to prominince during the same time period, and indeed both groups were often friends and journalistic co-workers. The term Left Bank was first coined by film critic Richard Roud
Richard Roud
Richard Roud was an American writer on film and co-founder, with Amos Vogel, and a former program director and latterly director of the New York Film Festival from 1963 to 1987....
., who has described them as having "fondness for a kind of Bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts, and a consequent interest in experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
making", as well as an identification with the political left. Many of Marker's earliest films were produced by Anatole Dauman
Anatole Dauman
Anatole Dauman was a French film producer. He produced films by Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Wim Wenders, Nagisa Oshima, Andrei Tarkovsky, Chris Marker, Volker Schlöndorff, Walerian Borowczyk, and Alain Resnais....
.
In 1952 Marker made his first film, Olympia 52
Olympia 52
Olympia 52 is a 1952 French documentary film about the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. Olympia 52 was produced by Peuple et Culture, a nonprofit organization, and it was the first feature-length work directed by the French filmmaker Chris Marker, who also co-wrote the narrative and...
, a 16mm feature documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games
1952 Summer Olympics
The 1952 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Helsinki, Finland in 1952. Helsinki had been earlier given the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were cancelled due to World War II...
. In 1953 Marker collaborated with Resnais on the documentary Statues Also Die
Statues Also Die
Statues Also Die is a 1953 French essay film directed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, about historical African art and the effects colonialism has had on how it is perceived. The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo...
. The film examines traditional African art
African art
African art constitutes one of the most diverse legacies on earth. Though many casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, the continent is full of people, societies, and civilizations, each with a unique visual special culture. The definition also includes the art of the African...
such as sculptures and masks, and its decline with coming of Western colonialism. The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo
Prix Jean Vigo
The Prix Jean Vigo is an award in the Cinema of France given annually since 1951 to a French film director in homage to Jean Vigo. It was founded by French writer Claude...
, but was banned by French censors for its criticism of French colonialism.
After working as assistant director on Resnais's Night and Fog
Night and Fog (film)
Night and Fog is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was...
in 1955, Marker made Sunday in Peking, a short documentary "film essay" that would characterize Marker's unique film style for most of his career. The film was shot in two weeks by Marker while he was traveling through China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
with Armand Gatti in September 1955. In the film, Marker's commentary overlaps scenes from China, such as tombs which, contrary to Westernized understands of Chinese legends, do not contain the remains of any Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
emperors.
After working on the commentary for Resnais' film Le mystère de l'atelier quinze in 1957, Marker continued to form his own cinematic style with the feature documentary Letter from Siberia. An essay on the gradual destruction of Siberia's culture and individuality, the film combines footage that Marker shot in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, old newsreel footage, cartoons, stills and, at one point, an illustration of Alfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman
Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed and named by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman...
from Mad Magazine, all accompanied by Marker's signature commentary, which takes the form of a letter from the director to his audience. In one sequence, Marker repeats the same collection of shots three times with different commentary: the first one praising the Soviet Union, the second denouncing it, and the third taking an objective stance.
In 1959 Marker made the animated film Les Astronautes with Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk
Walerian Borowczyk was a Polish film director. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.-Biography:...
. The film was a combination of traditional drawings with still photography. In 1960 Marker made Description d'un combat, a documentary on the State of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
which reminisces on the countries past and future. The film won the Golden Bear for Best Documentary at the 1961 Berlin Film Festival
11th Berlin International Film Festival
The 11th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 23 to July 4, 1961.-Jury:* James Quinn * France Roche* Marc Turfkruyer* Satyajit Ray* Gian Luigi Rondi* Hirosugu Ozaki* Nicholas Ray* Falk Harnack* Hans Schaarwächter...
.
In January 1961, Marker traveled to Cuba and shot the film ¡Cuba Sí!. The film promotes and defends Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
and includes two interviews with the Comandante. The film ends with an anti-American epilogue in which the United States is embarrassed by the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
fiasco, and was subsequently banned. The banned essay was included in Marker's first volume of collected film commentaries, Commentaires I, published in 1961. The following year Marker published Coréennes, a collection of photographs and essays on the conditions of Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
.
La jetée and Le joli mai (1962-1966)
La Jetée
La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
(The Pier) in 1962. It tells of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. In the film, a survivor of a futuristic third World War is obsessed with a distant and disconnected memories of a pier at the Orly Airport
Orly Airport
Paris-Orly Airport is an airport located partially in Orly and partially in Villeneuve-le-Roi, south of Paris, France. It has flights to cities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, North America and Southeast Asia. Prior to the construction of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Orly was...
, the image of a mysterious woman, and a man's death. Scientists experimenting in time travel select the man choose him for their studies, and the man travels back in time to contact the mysterious woman, and discovers that the man's death at the Orly Airport was his own. Except for one shot of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up, the film is composed entirely of photographs by Jean Chiabaud and stars Davos Hanich as the man, Hélène Chatelain
Hélène Chatelain
Hélène Chatelain is a French actress who appeared as "the woman" in Chris Marker's La jetée and later worked with playwright Armand Gatti and Iossif Pasternak...
as the woman and filmmaker William Klein
William Klein
William Klein is a photographer and filmmaker noted to for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography...
as a man from the future. The film won the Prix Jean Vigo
Prix Jean Vigo
The Prix Jean Vigo is an award in the Cinema of France given annually since 1951 to a French film director in homage to Jean Vigo. It was founded by French writer Claude...
in 1962.
La Jetée was the inspiration for Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii
Mamoru Oshii is a Japanese filmmaker, television director, and writer. Famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling, Oshii has directed a number of popular anime, including Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer, Ghost in the Shell, and Patlabor 2...
's 1987 debut live action feature The Red Spectacles
The Red Spectacles
is a 1987 absurdist, surrealist Japanese film directed by Mamoru Oshii, co-written with Kazunori Ito, and starring Shigeru Chiba and Mako Hyodo.This is the first film of the Kerberos saga and last episode in Oshii's Orwellian Watchdog of Hell feature trilogy.-Chronicles:Kerberos saga historical...
(and, later for, parts of Oshii's 2001 film Avalon
Avalon (2001 film)
is a 2001 science-fiction film by Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Oshii. The name of the film originates from the island Avalon in the legend of King Arthur.-Overview:...
as well) and also inspired Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
's 12 Monkeys (1995). It also inspired many of director Mira Nair
Mira Nair
Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...
's shots for the 2003 film The Namesake
The Namesake (film)
The Namesake is a 2006 film which was released in the United States on March 9, 2007, following screenings at film festivals in Toronto and New York City. It was directed by Mira Nair and is based upon the novel of the same name by Jhumpa Lahiri, who appeared in the movie. Sooni Taraporevala...
.
While making La Jetee, Marker was simultaneously making the 150-minute documentary essay-film Le joli mai, released in 1963. Beginning in the Spring of 1962, Marker and his camera operator Pierre Lhomme shot 55 hours of footage interviewing random people on the streets of Paris. The questions, asked by the unseen Marker, range from their personal lives, as well as social and political issues of relevance at that time. Like he had with montages of landscapes and indigenous art, Marker created a film essay that contrasts and juxtaposes a variety of lives with his signature commentary (spoken by Marker's friends, singer-actor Yves Montand
Yves Montand
-Early life:Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, the son of poor peasants Giuseppina and Giovanni Livi, a broommaker. Montand's mother was a devout Catholic, while his father held strong Communist beliefs. Because of the Fascist regime in Italy, Montand's family left for France in...
in the French version and Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top...
in the English version). The film has been compared to the Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
films of Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...
, and criticized by its practitioners at the time. It was shown in competition at the 1963 Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
, where it won the award for Best First Work. It also won the Golden Dove Award at the Leipzig DOK Festival.
After the documentary Le Mystère Koumiko in 1965, Marker made Si j'avais quatre dromadaires, an essay-film that, like La jetée, is a photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
of over 800 photographs that Marker had taken over the past 10 years from 26 countries. The commentary takes on a slightly different dimension than his previous commentaries by using a fictitious photographer have a conversation with two friends to discuss the photos. The film's title is an allusion to a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
. It was the last film in which Marker includes "travel footage" for many years.
SLON and ISKRA (1967-1974)
In 1967 Marker published his second volume of collected film essays, Commentaires II. That same year, Marker organized the omnibus film Loin du VietnamFar from Vietnam
-Cast:* Anne Bellec* Karen Blanguernon* Bernard Fresson as Claude Ridder* Maurice Garrel* Jean-Luc Godard as Himself* Ho Chi Minh as Himself * Valérie Mayoux* Marie-France Mignal* Fidel Castro as Himself...
, a protest to the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
with segments contributed by Marker, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, Agnes Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
, Claude Lelouch, William Klein
William Klein
William Klein is a photographer and filmmaker noted to for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography...
, Michele Ray and Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens
Joris Ivens was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and committed communist.-Early life and career:...
. The film includes footage of the war, from both sides, as well as anti-war protests in New York and Paris and other anti-war activities.
From this initial collection of filmmakers with left-wing political agendas, Marker created the group S.L.O.N. (Société pour le lancement des oeuvres nouvelles, but also the Russian word for elephant). SLON was a film collective whose objectives were to make films and to encourage industrial workers to create film collectives of their own. Its members included Valerie Mayoux, Jean-Claude Lerner, Alain Adair and John Tooker. Marker is usually credited as director or co-director of all of the films made by SLON.
After the events of May 1968, Marker felt a moral obligation to abandon his own personal film career and devote himself to SLON and its activities. SLON's first film was about a strike at a Rhodiacéta factory in France, À bientôt, j'espère
À bientôt, j'espère
À bientôt, j'espère is a 1968 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker and Mario Marret. It tells the story of a strike action at a textile factory in Besançon in March 1967. The film was shot in black and white, with photography by Pierre Lhomme.- External links :...
(Rhodiacéta) in 1968. Later that year SLON made La Sixième face du pentagone, about an anti-war protest in Washington D.C. and was a reaction to what SLON considered to be the unfair and censored reportage of such events on mainstream television. The film was shot by Francois Reichenbach
François Reichenbach
François Reichenbach was a French film director, cinematographer producer and screenwriter. He directed 40 films between 1954 and 1993.-Selected filmography:* America As Seen by a Frenchman...
, who received co-director credit. La Bataille des dix millions was made in 1970 with Mayoux as co-director and Santiago Alvarez
Santiago Alvarez
Santiago Alvarez was a revolutionary general and a founder and honorary president of the first directorate of the Nacionalista Party...
as cameraman and is about the 1970 sugar crop in Cuba and its disastrous effects on the country. In 1971, SLON made Le Train en marche, a new prologue to Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin's 1935 film Schastye, which had recently been re-released in France.
In 1974, SLON became I.S.K.R.A. (Images, Sons, Kinescope, Réalisations, Audiovisuelles, but also the name of Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
's political newspaper Iskra
Iskra
Iskra was a political newspaper of Russian socialist emigrants established as the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Initially, it was managed by Vladimir Lenin, moving as he moved. The first edition was published in Stuttgart on December 1, 1900. Other editions were...
).
Return to personal work (1974-1986)
In 1974 returned to his personal work and made a film outside of ISKRA. La Solitude du chanteur de fond is a one-hour documentary about Marker's friend Yves MontandYves Montand
-Early life:Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, the son of poor peasants Giuseppina and Giovanni Livi, a broommaker. Montand's mother was a devout Catholic, while his father held strong Communist beliefs. Because of the Fascist regime in Italy, Montand's family left for France in...
's benefit concert for Chilean refugees. The concert was Montand's first public performance in four years and the film includes film clips from his long career as a singer and actor.
Marker had been working on a film about Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
with ISKRA since 1973. Marker had collaborated with Chilean writer Armand Mattelart
Armand Mattelart
Armand Mattelart is a Belgian sociologist and well known as a Leftist French scholar. His work deals with media, culture and communication, specially in their historical and international dimensions....
and ISKRA members Valérie Mayoux and Jacqueline Meppiel to shoot and collect the visual materials, which Marker then edited together and provided the commentary for. The resulting film was the two and a half hour documentary La Spirale, released in 1975. The film chronicles recent events in Chile, beginning with the the 1970 election
Chilean presidential election, 1970
A presidential election was held in Chile on 4 September 1970. A narrow plurality was secured by Salvador Allende, the candidate of the Popular Unity coalition of leftist parties...
of socialist President Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
until his murder
Death of Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende, President of Chile, reportedly committed suicide during the Chilean coup of 1973. Since that time, there has been great controversy between supporters and detractors of Allende on the circumstances of his death, since the military junta's version of his suicide was discounted by...
and the resulting coup in 1973.
Marker then began work on one of his most ambitious films, A Grin Without a Cat
A Grin Without a Cat
A Grin Without a Cat is a 1977 French essay film by Chris Marker. It focuses on global political turmoil in the 1960s and 70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America...
, released in 1977. The film's title refers to the Cheshire Cat
Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is a fictional cat popularised by Lewis Carroll's depiction of it in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Known for his distinctive mischievous grin, the Cheshire Cat has had a notable impact on popular culture.-Origins:...
from Alice in Wonderland. The metaphor compares the promise of the global socialist movement before May 1968 (the grin) with its actual presence in the world after May 1968 (the cat). The film's original French title is Le fond de l'air est rouge, which means "The base of the air is red", or "revolution is in the air", implying that the socialist movement existed only in the air.
The film was intended to be an all encompassing portrait of political movements since May 1968, a summation of the work which he had taken part in for ten years. The film is divided into two parts: the first half focuses on the hopes and idealism before May 1968, and the second half on the disillusion and disappointments since those events. Marker begins the film with the Odessa Steps sequence from Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
's film The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
, which Marker points is a fictitious creation of Eisenstein which has still influenced the image of the historical event. Marker used very little commentary in this film, but the film's montage structure and preoccupation with memory make it a Marker film. Upon release, the film was criticized for not addressing many current issues of the New Left such as the woman's movement, sexual liberation and worker self-management. The film was re-released in the US in 2002.
In the late 1970s Marker traveled extensively throughout the world, included an extended period in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. From this trip, Marker first published the photo-essay Le Dépays in 1982, as well as using the experience for his next film Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
, released in 1982.
Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil
Sans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
stretches the limits of what could be called a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
. It is an essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
, a montage
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
, mixing pieces of documentary with fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
and philosophical comments, creating an atmosphere of dream
Dream
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. The main themes are Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
and travel
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
. A sequence in the middle of the film takes place in San Francisco, and heavily references Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
. Marker has said that Vertigo is the only film "capable of portraying impossible memory, insane memory." The film's commentary are credited to the fictitious cameraman Sandor Krasna, and read in the form of letters by an unnamed woman. Though centered around Japan, the film was also shot in such other countries as Guinea Bissau, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
. Sans Soleil was shown at the 1983 Berlin Film Festival where it won the OCIC Award. It was also awarded the Sutherland Trophy at the 1983 British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
Awards.
In 1984 Marker was invited by producer Serge Silberman
Serge Silberman
Serge Silberman was a French film producer.Silberman was born in Łódź, then a part of the Russian Empire in a Jewish family. During World War II Silberman survived Nazi concentration camps and eventually settled in Paris...
to document the making of Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
's film Ran
Ran (film)
is a 1985 Japanese-French jidaigeki film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film starred Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. It also stars Mieko Harada as the wife of Ichimonji's eldest son...
. From this Marker made A.K., released in 1985. The film focuses more on Kurosawa's remote but polite personality than on the making of the film.. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection. It is run at the Salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or.This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob...
section at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival
1985 Cannes Film Festival
-Jury:*Miloš Forman *Claude Imbert *Edwin Zbonek *Francis Veber *Jorge Amado *Mauro Bolognini *Michel Perez *Mo Rothmann *Néstor Almendros *Sarah Miles...
, before Ran itself had been released.
In 1985 Marker's long time friend and neighbor Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret
Simone Signoret was a French cinema actress often hailed as one of France's greatest movie stars. She became the first French person to win an Academy Award, for her role in Room at the Top...
died of cancer. Marker the made the one-hour TV documentary Mémoires pour Simone as a tribute to her in 1986.
Multimedia and later career (1987-present)
Beginning with Sans Soleil, he developed a deep interest in digitalDigital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
, which led to his film Level 5 (1996) and Immemory (1998, 2008), an interactive multimedia CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
, produced for the Centre Pompidou (French language version) and from Exact Change
Exact Change
Exact Change is an independent book publishing company formed in 1990 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang of Galaxie 500 and later of Damon and Naomi...
(English version). Marker created a 19 minute multimedia piece in 2005 for The Museum of Modern Art in New York titled Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men which was influenced by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
's poem.
Chris Marker lives in Paris and very rarely grants interviews. When asked for a picture of himself, he usually offers a photograph of a cat instead. (Marker was represented in Agnes Varda's 2008 documentary "The Beaches of Agnes" by a cartoon drawing of a cat, speaking in a technologically altered voice.) Marker's own cat is named Guillaume-en-egypte. In 2009 Marker commissioned an Avatar of Guillaume-en-Egypte to represent him in machinima works. The avatar was created by Exosius Woolley and first appeared in the short film / machinima, "Ouvroir the Movie by Chris Marker."
In the 2007 Criterion Collection release of La Jetée and Sans Soleil, Marker included a short essay, "Working on a shoestring budget". He confessed to shooting all of Sans Soleil with a silent film camera and recording all the audio on a primitive audio cassette recorder. Marker also reminds the reader that only one short scene in La Jetée is of a moving image, as Marker could only borrow a movie camera for one afternoon while working on the film.
Filmography
- Olympia 52Olympia 52Olympia 52 is a 1952 French documentary film about the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. Olympia 52 was produced by Peuple et Culture, a nonprofit organization, and it was the first feature-length work directed by the French filmmaker Chris Marker, who also co-wrote the narrative and...
(1952) - Statues Also DieStatues Also DieStatues Also Die is a 1953 French essay film directed by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, about historical African art and the effects colonialism has had on how it is perceived. The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo...
(1953 with Alain ResnaisAlain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
) - Sundays in Peking (1956)
- Letters from Siberia (1957)
- Les Astronautes (1959 with Walerian BorowczykWalerian BorowczykWalerian Borowczyk was a Polish film director. He directed 40 films between 1946 and 1988. His career as a film director was mainly in France.-Biography:...
) - Description d'un combat (1960)
- ¡Cuba Sí! (1961)
- La jetéeLa JetéeLa jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
(1962) - Le joli mai (1963, 2006 re-cut)
- Le Mystère Koumiko (1965)
- Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966)
- Loin du VietnamFar from Vietnam-Cast:* Anne Bellec* Karen Blanguernon* Bernard Fresson as Claude Ridder* Maurice Garrel* Jean-Luc Godard as Himself* Ho Chi Minh as Himself * Valérie Mayoux* Marie-France Mignal* Fidel Castro as Himself...
(1967) - Rhodiacéta (1967)
- La Sixième face du pentagone (1968 with Reichenbach)
- Cinétracts (1968)
- À bientôt, j'espèreÀ bientôt, j'espèreÀ bientôt, j'espère is a 1968 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker and Mario Marret. It tells the story of a strike action at a textile factory in Besançon in March 1967. The film was shot in black and white, with photography by Pierre Lhomme.- External links :...
(1968 with Marret) - On vous parle du Brésil: Tortures (1969)
- Jour de tournage (1969)
- Classe de lutte (1969)
- On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens (1970)
- On vous parle du Brésil: Carlos Marighela (1970)
- La Bataille des dix millions (1971)
- Le Train en marche (1971)
- On vous parle de Prague: le deuxième procès d'Artur London (1971)
- Vive la baleine (1972)
- L'Ambassade (1973)
- On vous parle du Chili: ce que disait Allende (1973 with Littin)
- Puisqu'on vous dit que c'est possible (1974)
- La Solitude du chanteur de fond (1974)
- La Spirale (1975)
- A Grin Without a CatA Grin Without a CatA Grin Without a Cat is a 1977 French essay film by Chris Marker. It focuses on global political turmoil in the 1960s and 70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America...
(1977) - Quand le siècle a pris formes (1978)
- Junkopia (1981)
- Sans SoleilSans SoleilSans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
(1983) - 2084 (1984)
- From Chris to Christo (1985)
- Matta (1985)
- A.K. (1985)
- Eclats (1986)
- Mémoires pour Simone (1986)
- Tokyo Days (1988)
- Spectre (1988)
- L'héritage de la chouette (1989)
- Bestiaire (three short video haiku) (1990)
- Bestiaire 1. Chat écoutant la musique
- Bestiaire 2. An owl is An owl is an owl
- Bestiaire 3. Zoo Piece
- Getting away with itGetting Away With It"Getting Away with It" was the first single by the English band Electronic, which comprised Bernard Sumner of New Order, ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, and guesting vocalist Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys. It was first released in 1989 ....
(1990) - Berlin 1990 (1990)
- Détour Ceausescu (1991)
- Théorie des ensembles (1991)
- Coin fenètre (1992)
- Azulmoon (1992)
- Le Tombeau d'AlexandreThe Last BolshevikThe Last Bolshevik is a 1992 French documentary film about director Aleksandr Medvedkin, directed by Chris Marker.-Cast:* Léonor Graser as Dinosaur girl* Nikolai Izvolov as Guest* Kira Paramonova as Guest* Viktor Dyomin as Guest...
aka The Last Bolshevik (1992) - Le 20 heurs dans les camps (1993)
- SLON Tango (1993)
- Bullfight in Okinawa (1994)
- Eclipse (1994)
- Haiku (1994)
- Haiku 1. Petite Ceinture
- Haiku 2. Chaika
- Haiku 3. Owl Gets in Your Eyes
- Casque bleu (1995)
- Silent Movie (1995)
- Level FiveLevel Five (film)Level Five is a 1997 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker and starring Catherine Belkhodja.-Cast:* Catherine Belkhodja as Laura* Kenji Tokitsu as Himself* Nagisa Oshima as Himself* Ju'nishi Ushiyama as Himself* Kinjo Shigeaki as Himself...
(1997) - Un maire au Kosovo (2000)
- One Day in the Life of Andrei ArsenevichOne Day in the Life of Andrei ArsenevichOne Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich is a 1999 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker, about and an homage to the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was an episode of the French documentary film series Cinéastes de notre temps , which in over ninety episodes since 1966...
(2000) - Le facteur sonne toujours cheval (2001)
- Avril inquiet (2001)
- Le souvenir d'un avenir (with Bellon 2003)
- Chats Perchés (2004) - a documentary about M. ChatM. ChatM. Chat is the name of a graffiti cat that originally appeared in Orléans, France in 1997. The graffiti appeared most frequently on chimneys, but was also sighted in other places, such as train platforms and at political rallies...
street artStreet artStreet art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives... - Leila Attacks (2006)
Film Collaborations
- Nuit et BrouillardNight and Fog (film)Night and Fog is a 1955 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was...
(Resnais 1955)- Note: In a 1995 interview Resnais states that the final version of the commentary was a collaboration between Marker and Jean Cayrol (source: Film Comment).
- Les hommes de la baleine (Ruspoli 1956)
- Note: under the pseudonym "Jacopo Berenizi" Marker wrote the commentary for this short about whale hunters in the Azores. The two would return to this topic in 1972's Vive la Baleine (Film Comment).
- Le mystere de l'atelier quinze (Resnais et Heinrich 1957)
- Note: Marker wrote the commentary for this fictional short (Film Comment).
- Le Siècle a soif (Vogel 1958)
- Note: Marker wrote and spoke all the commentary for this short film about fruit juice in Alexandrine verse (Film Comment).
- La Mer et les jours (Vogel et Kaminker 1958)
- Note: Marker present commentary for this "somber work about the daily lives of fishermen on Brittany's Île de Sein" (Film Comment).
- L'Amérique insolite (Reichenbach 1958)
- Note: Marker was eventually credited as a writer for this one, apparently, he wrote the dialogue (Film Comment).
- Django Reinhardt (Paviot 1959)
- Note: Marker narrated this one (Film Comment).
- Jouer à Paris (Varlin 1962)
- Note: This was edited by Marker - essentially, this film is a 27-minute postscript to Le Joli Mai assembled from leftover footage and organized around a new commentary (Film Comment).
- A Valparaiso (Ivens 1963)
- Note: This gem was written by Marker. It feels like a Marker film.
- Les Chemins de la fortune (Kassovitz 1964)
- Note: Marker apparently helped edit and organise this Venezuela travelogue (Film Comment).
- La Douceur du village (Reichenbach 1964)
- Note: Edited by Marker.
- La Brûlure de mille soleils (Kast 1964)
- Note: Marker edited this (mostly) animated science-fiction exstentialist short and (possibly) collaborated on the script (Film Comment).
- Le volcan interditLe Volcan interditLe Volcan interdit is a 1966 French documentary film directed by Haroun Tazieff. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....
(Tazieff 1966)- Note: Marker narrates this volcano documentary.
- Europort-Rotterdam (Ivens 1966)
- Note: Marker did the textual adaptation (Film Comment.
- On vous parle de Flins (Devart 1970)
- Note: Marker helped film and edit this short (Film Comment).
- L'Afrique express (Tessier et Lang 1970)
- Note: Marker wrote the introductory text for this film under the name "Boris Villeneuve" (Film Comment).
- Kashima Paradise (Le Masson et Deswarte 1974)
- Note: Marker collaborated on the commentary on this documentary about the destruction of Kashima and Narita (Film Comment).
- La Batalla de Chile (Guzman, 1975–1976)
- Note: Marker helped produce and contributed to the screenplay for this, perhaps the greatest of all documentary films (Film Comment).
- One Sister and Many Brothers (Makavejev 1994)
- Note: Marker tapes Makavejev circulating among the guests of a party in his honor as much jovial backslapping abounds (Film comment).
External links
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Bibliography of books and articles about Marker via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center
- Chris Marker: Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory Blog devoted to Chris Marker
- Chris Marker's "Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men"
- http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=387Description of the DVD release of La jetéeLa JetéeLa jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
and Sans SoleilSans SoleilSans Soleil is a 1983 French film directed by Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky...
by Criterion Collection ] - Description of Marker's book of photographs and essays titled Staring Back
- http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=4947Description of Marker's 'cine roman' titled La jetéeLa JetéeLa jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
, based on the film of the same name.] - The Wexner Center's "Chris Marker Store"
- Filmmaker As Socialist Anthologist by Williams Cole, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2009 Issue
- Literature on Chris Marker
- Chris Marker and the Audiovisual Archive, Oliver Mayer, Scope 20