Chris Marker

French filmmaker, photographer, and essayist of the New Wave's Left Bank group; his 1962 short La Jetée told a science-fiction story almost entirely in still photographs, and his later Sans Soleil defined the modern essay film.

In images

Details

Lived: 1921–2012
Born: 29 July 1921
Birthplace: Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Died: 29 July 2012 · aged 91
Place of death: Paris, France
Nationality: French
Roles: FilmmakerPhotographer

About Chris Marker

Chris Marker was born Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve and guarded his privacy for most of his life, rarely sitting for photographs and giving few interviews. He came to cinema from writing and photography, and his work kept the habits of both: films built from still images, from travel, and from a commentator's voice thinking aloud. He belonged to the New Wave's Left Bank group — the cohort around Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda, older and more literary than the Cahiers du cinéma critics — and had co-directed the anticolonial short Statues Also Die with Resnais in 1953.

His best-known film is also his shortest to describe: La Jetée (1962), a twenty-eight-minute science-fiction story of memory and time travel told almost entirely in black-and-white stills, which later furnished the premise of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. With Sans Soleil (1983) he pushed the essay film to its fullest reach, and he went on experimenting with photography, video, and digital media until his death on his ninety-first birthday.

Selected works

Cataloged from the holding institutions' records. Reproductions appear only where the rights are verified.

Cinema

Archival photograph

Film

La Jetée

1962 · 28-minute short film, black and white — a photo-roman

Chris Marker's La Jetée is a science-fiction film told almost entirely in still photographs. After a Third World War, survivors under a ruined Paris experiment with sending a prisoner through time, choosing him for the strength of one childhood memory: a woman's face on the observation pier at Orly, and a man's death. Twenty-eight minutes long and built from photographs joined by dissolves and a narrator's voice, it is the New Wave's Left Bank sensibility — memory, the still image, the aftermath of catastrophe — pushed to its logical extreme, and the film that later gave Terry Gilliam the premise of 12 Monkeys.

Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962. Image © the rights holder, shown under fair use.

People they knew

Documented connections — every one carries its source.

Alain Resnais

Filmmaker

Collaborated with · 1953

Marker and Resnais co-directed the anticolonial short Statues Also Die (Les statues meurent aussi, 1953), an early bond among the New Wave's Left Bank filmmakers.

— The Criterion Collection — La Jetée; Encyclopaedia Britannica — New Wave (French film movement)

Movements

The artistic and literary currents this life ran through.

Young Jean-Luc Godard in dark glasses, cigarette in his mouth, holding a strip of film up to the light with both hands

Film movement · c. 1958–1968

The French New Wave

A central figure of the New Wave's Left Bank group, alongside Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda; his 1962 short La Jetée is one of the wing's defining films.

— The Criterion Collection — La Jetée; Encyclopaedia Britannica — New Wave (French film movement)

Sourced claims

Every connection the graph holds for Chris, with the evidence behind it.

Associated with · 1962

The French New Wave

A central figure of the New Wave's Left Bank group, alongside Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda; his 1962 short La Jetée is one of the wing's defining films.

— The Criterion Collection — La Jetée; Encyclopaedia Britannica — New Wave (French film movement)

Collaborated with · 1953

Alain Resnais

Marker and Resnais co-directed the anticolonial short Statues Also Die (Les statues meurent aussi, 1953), an early bond among the New Wave's Left Bank filmmakers.

— The Criterion Collection — La Jetée; Encyclopaedia Britannica — New Wave (French film movement)