Chris Marker

Known for DirectingBorn 1921-07-29Died 2012-07-29Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France

Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, better known as Chris Marker (France, 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012), was a French writer, poet, activist, critic, photographer, traveler, journalist, film essayist, multimedia artist, and documentary filmmaker. He began his career as part of the French Rive Gauche group—parallel to but distinct from the Nouvelle Vague—with which he would later share certain themes and collaborators. Marker is credited with developing the subjective documentary and is considered a pioneer of collective cinema in France. His films are known for their poetic, essayistic, and often experimental qualities, blending a reflective voice with a fascination for memory, art, war, politics, culture, and nature. Over six decades of work, he observed the world with meticulous curiosity, irony, and compassion, continually experimenting with new forms of image manipulation and montage. He was also famously elusive. For many years, few people knew what Chris Marker looked like—he disliked being photographed, and no confirmed portraits were publicly available. He often amused himself by giving contradictory accounts of his life in the rare interviews he granted. As Philippe Dubois observed, “Chris Marker is, in a way, the most celebrated of the unknown filmmakers.” His official website adds: “Rather than a man without qualities, he is a man without biography.” Marker also worked under numerous pseudonyms, including Hayao Yamaneko, Jacopo Berenzini, Kosinki, Michel Krasna, Sandor Krasna, and Guillaume-en-Égypte (his feline avatar), though his best-known identity remains Chris Marker. Among his most significant works are La Jetée (1962), Sans Soleil (1983), Far from Vietnam (1967), A Grin Without a Cat (1977), A.K. (1985), Level Five (1997), and One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (1999). He also explored interactive and digital media with the CD-ROM Immemory (1997), maintained a website titled Gorgomancy, a YouTube channel called Kosinki, and created a virtual gallery, Ouvroir, within the online world Second Life.Read more

Movies & web series

Des Hommes Dans Le Ciel

The Owl's Legacy

Report on Brazil: Torture

Cat Listening to Music

A Year of TV Seen by Guillaume

Mémoires pour Simone

Night and Fog

The Beaches of Agnès

Agnès Varda: From Here to There

A Grin Without a Cat

The Forbidden Volcano

The Lovely Month of May

The Battle of Chile: Part II

Twelve Monkeys

Cinétracts

The Last Bolshevik

La Jetée

Kashima Paradise

Sans Soleil

Three Haiku Videos

The Battle of Chile: Part III

One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

¡Cuba Sí!

The Confession

Cuba: Battle of the 10,000,000

Three Cheers for the Whale

May Days

A Mayor in Kosovo

The Case of the Grinning Cat

Tokyo-Ga

The Sea and the Days

Description of a Struggle

Havre

Remembrance of Things to Come

From Chris to Christo

If I Had Four Dromedaries

Far from Vietnam

Valparaiso

Les hommes de la baleine

The Mystery of Workshop 15

The Spiral

The Koumiko Mystery

Green Vinyl

Olympia 52

America as Seen by a Frenchman

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

Letter from Siberia

Statues Also Die