Chris Marker
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.
Sans Soleil
as Self (uncredited)A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in...
Movie pageThe Beaches of Agnès
as Self (archive footage)Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of...
Movie pageTokyo-Ga
as Self (uncredited)German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of...
Movie pageThe Lovely Month of May
as Self / Interviewer (voice)Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and...
Movie pageA. K.
as Self - Narrator (voice)An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese...
Movie pageLa Traversée du désir
as SelfWhat was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to...
Movie pageAgnès Varda: From Here to There
as SelfAgnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive...
Movie pageMay Days
as SelfFilmmaker William Klein documents the Paris student riots that occurred in May of 1968.
Movie pageLevel Five
as Self (voice) (uncredited)Laura, a French programmer, inherits the task of creating a game about the World War II Battle...
Movie pageOne Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich
as Self (voice) (uncredited)A documentary about the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was an episode of the...
Movie pageThe Koumiko Mystery
as NarratorWhile filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French...
Movie pageTen Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker
as Kaibyō (archive footage)Ten years after the death of iconic French filmmaker, Chris Marker. A filmmaker, hoping to...
Movie pageThe Invention of Chris Marker
as SelfA desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.
Movie pageTokyo Days
as Self (voice) (uncredited)This idiosyncratic view of Tokyo begins with a live mannequin in a store window and French...
Movie pageChris Marker: Never Explain, Never Complain
as Self (archive footage)Posthumous portrait of Chris Marker, the elusive French filmmaker- essayist, traveller,...
Movie pageRush - Voyage à Moscou
as Lui-mêmeA document of Perestroika, to be viewed as (nearly) unedited rushes of a voyage to Moscow,...
Movie pageIn Chris Marker's Studio
as SelfTwo friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.
Movie pageLumière Award to Chris Marker
as SelfThis silent film shows the jury voting for Chris Marker, who receives the Louis Lumière award...
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