Chris Marker (born Christian Hippolyte François Georges Bouche-Villeneuve) was 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."

Films [ edit ]

The Owl's Legacy (L'Héritage de la chouette) [ edit ]

1989, France/Greece, col., Beta sp, Television Mini-Series, 13 episodes x 26'.

Written by Jean Claude-Carrière and Chris Marker, directed by Marker, commissioned by S.E.P.T. and financed by the Onassis Foundation. The series was filmed in Tblisi, Athens, Paris, Berkeley and Tokyo, with appearances from Iannis Xenakis, Michel Serres, Cornelius Castoriadis and others, screened on the Franco-German TV network Arte in 1989 and on Channel 4 in 1991 (where it was voiced by Bob Peck). The series was never broadcasted in Greece, since the Onassis Foundation had taken offence at George Steiner’s statement that ancient Greece was nothing to do with modern Greece; that modern Greece was a farce and a joke. The foundation had demanded an apology. Marker gave them space to respond to Steiner, but the foundation were not content with this. (Source)

With

Daniel Andler, Theo Angelopoulos, Kostas Axelos, Catherine Belkhodja, Linos Benakis, Richard Bennett, Christiane Bron, Cornelius Castoriadis, Sophie Chauveau, Dimitri Delis, Patrick Deschamps, Marcel Detienne, Arielle Dombasle, Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Kostas Georgousopoulos, Mark Griffith, David Halperin, Mina Himona, Angélique Ionatos, Viatcheslav Ivanov, Michel Jobert, Lee Kaminski, Lika Kavjaradze, Elia Kazan, Nancy Laughlin, François Lissarrague, Baltasar Lopes, Otar Lordkipanidzé, Merab Mamardachvili, Fouli Manelopoulos, Guivi Margvelachvili, Matta, Melina Mercouri, Spiros Mercouris, Alex Minotis, Oswyn Murray, Michael Nagler, Yukio Ninagawa, Tatiana Papamashou, Amy Phillips, Marios Ploritis, Thomas Rosenmayer, Mihalis Sakellariou, Renate Schleisser, Alain Schnapp, Michel Serres, Giulia Sissa, Manuela Smith, Deborah Steiner, George Steiner, Nikos Svoronos, Leonid Tchelidzé, Evi Touloupa, Vassilis Vassilikos, Jean-Pierre Vernant, John Winkler, Iannis Xenakis, Atsuhiko Yoshida

Music

Eleni Karaindrou (solos/Ian Garbarek/Nana Vasconcelos), Christelle Kosc/UPIC, Krzystof Penderecki, Herbert Windt, Michel Krasna [C.M.], J.s. Bach, Iannis Xenakis/UPIC, François-Bernard Mâche/UPIC, Christelle Kosc/UPIC, Pierre Bernard/UPIC, Leos Janacek, Giovanni Fusco, Ludwig van Beethoven.

UPIC: Alain Desprès, Agnès Frontisi, Laurence Braunberger, Thierry Kimmel, Ramuntcho Matta

Excerpts: O Hélios O Héliatora by Angélique Ionatos (poem by Odysseus Elytis)

DFR: Florence Malraux, Valérie de Ricquebourg, Carline Bouilhet, Diana Garcia, Laurence Brauberger, Françoise Widhoff

Quotes

Paris 1900 (Nicole Védrès), Olympia (L[eni] Riefenstahl), On vous parle de Grece (Slon), L'Odisse A (Bertolini/Padovan/Liguoro), America America (Elia Kazan), Skinoussa (Jean Baronnet), Tragédie Egéenne (Basil Maros), Avant-poste (David Niles), Rythmetic - Ligens horizontales homage to Norman McLaren and to the National Film Board of Canada, Arcana (Maurice Le Roux) – by Ph. Vaudoux, Acropole (Kostas Vretakos), Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais), Medee (Yukio Ninagawa)

Voice over

André Dussolier

Edited by

Khadicha Bariha, Nedjma Scialom

Photographed

Emiko Omori, Peter Chapell

From an idea

Jean-Claude Carrière

Written

Jean-Claude Carrière and Chris Marker

Language

English, and French, Georgian, Greek with English subtitles

Co-production

ATTICA ART PRODUCTIONS INC (Onassis Foundation), LA S.E.P.T. (Thierry Garrel), FIT PRODUCTION with the participation of SOFICA IMAGES INVESTISSEMENTS CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA CINEMATOGRAPHIE TREBITSCH PRODUKTION INTERNATIONAL GMBH Société Nationale de Programme FRANCE-REGIONS FR3

Source

Videos were converted from Flash files found on JAFB's Viddler account. Gratuitous thanks to the original uploader.

More about the series

Filmography [ edit ]

(directed films; in French unless noted otherwise)

Writings [ edit ]

Le cœur net , Paris: Seuil, 1949, PDF, ARG. Novel. (French) The Forthright Spirit , trans. Robert Kee and Terence Kilmartin, London: Allan Wingate, 1951, 191 pp. (English)

, Paris: Seuil, 1949, PDF, ARG. Novel.

Commentaires 1, Paris: Seuil, 1961. Transcripts of six films by Marker: Les statues meurent aussi (1953), Dimanche à Pékin (1955), Lettre de Sibérie (1957), L'Amérique rêvée (1959), Description d'un combat (1960) and Cuba Si! (1961). (French)

Commentaires 2, Paris: Seuil, 1967. Transcripts of three films by Marker: Le mystère Koumiko (1965), Soy Mexico [an unfilmed project] (1965), and Si j’avais quatre dromedaires (1966). (French)

Silent Movie, ed. Ann Bremner, Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts/Ohio State University, 1995, 40 pp. Catalogue for the installation. (English)