Chris Marker

Born: 1921-07-29

Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, also known as Chris Marker (France: 29 July 1921 - 29 July 2012) was a French writer, poet, activist, internaut, critic, photographer, traveler, journalist, film enssayist, multimedia artist and documentary maker. He began his work as part of the French Rive gauche group, parallel but different from the nouvelle vague, with which he would later share themes and works. He is credited with creating the subjective documentary and is considered a pioneer of collective cinema in France. His cinematographic work is known for its poetic, sometimes ethereal, and video-art-like expression. He dedicated himself, during sixty years of work, to observing, with meticulous curiosity, with caustic and often amusing irony, even with anger, the vicissitudes of world history and also of the individual (memory, art, wars, politics, culture, nature, etc), all this while experimenting with various methods of image manipulation and montage. He is also known for the ignorance of his person. For years, hardly anyone knew what Chris Marker looked like, he didn't like being photographed, so there were no photos of him. It amused him to offer contradictory accounts of his life in the few written interviews he gave. The closest you can get to Marker's intimate life is in his film career. Philippe Dubois once said: "Chris Marker is, in a way, the most celebrated of the unknown filmmakers". "Rather than a Man Without Qualities, he is a Man Without Biography," says his official website: chrismarker.org. He used many pseudonyms too, some are Hayao Yamaneko, Jacopo Berenzini, Kosinki, Michel Krasna, Sandor Krasna, Guillaume-en-Égypte (his avatar) & the best known Chris Marker. Some of his most important works are La Jetée (1962), Sans Soleil (1983), Far From Vietnam (1967), A Grin Without a Cat (1977), Level Five (1997), A.K. (1985) & One Day In the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch (1999). He also dabbled in CD-ROMs with Immemory (1997), has a website called Gorgomancy, a Youtube channel called Kosinki & created a whole world dedicated to his interests, life and works, called 'Ouvroir', in the virtual world game: Second Life.


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Sans Soleil

as Self (uncredited)
Released: 1983-03-02

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in...

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Tokyo-Ga

as Self (uncredited)
Released: 1985-04-24

German director Wim Wenders made this documentary in which he tries to explore the Tokyo that...

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La Traversée du désir

as Self
Released: 2009-03-16

What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to...

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The Lovely Month of May

as Self / Interviewer (voice)
Released: 1963-05-01

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and...

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One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

as Self (voice) (uncredited)
Released: 1999-05-15

A documentary about the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was an episode of the...

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A. K.

as Narrator (voice)
Released: 1985-05-20

In 1985, Chris Marker traveled to Japan to attend the filming of Ran, directed by Akira...

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Level Five

as Self (voice) (uncredited)
Released: 1997-02-19

The French computer programmer Laura inherits the task of making a computer game of the Battle...

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The Koumiko Mystery

as Narrator
Released: 1965-10-09

While filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French...

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Tokyo Days

as Self (voice) (uncredited)
Released: 1988-07-06

This idiosyncratic view of Tokyo begins with a live mannequin in a store window and French...

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May Days

as Self
Released: 1978-01-01

Filmmaker William Klein documents the Paris student riots that occurred in May of 1968.

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In Chris Marker's Studio

as Self
Released: 2011-12-19

Two friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.

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The Invention of Chris Marker

as Self
Released: 2020-05-28

A desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.

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Agnès Varda: From Here to There

as Self
Released: 2011-10-01

Agnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive...

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Ten Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker

as Kaibyō (archive footage)
Released: 2023-10-31

Ten years after the death of iconic French filmmaker, Chris Marker. A filmmaker, hoping to...

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Rush - Voyage à Moscou

as Lui-même
Released: 1990-02-03

A document of Perestroika, to be viewed as (nearly) unedited rushes of a voyage to Moscow,...

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Lumière Award to Chris Marker

as Self
Released: 1962-03-03

This silent film shows the jury voting for Chris Marker, who receives the Louis Lumière award...

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