Chris Marker

4/5

Biography

Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, film director, multimedia artist and documentary maker.He is best known for directing La Jetée (1962), as well as Sans Soleil (1983) and AK (1985), a documentary about Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

  • Primary profession
  • Writer·director·editor
  • Country
  • France
  • Nationality
  • French
  • Gender
  • Male
  • Birth date
  • 29 July 1921
  • Place of birth
  • Neuilly-sur-Seine
  • Death date
  • 2012-07-29
  • Death age
  • 91
  • Place of death
  • Paris
  • Cause of death
  • Natural causes
  • Education
  • Lycée Pasteur
  • Knows language
  • French language

Music

Movies

Books

Awards

Trivia

Chris Marker took name Marker from Magic Marker pen.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 649-654. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Professor at LIDHEC (La Fmis)

Sent film stock to Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmn so that he could make La batalla de Chile: La lucha de un pueblo sin armas - Primera parte: La insurreccin de la burguesa documenting the military coup in Chile in 1973 after the U.S. pulled film supplies due to ideological differences. Marker told Guzman that what he was trying to do was insane, but he wanted to support him no less.

An infamously private person, he has never granted an interview and fastidiously keeps his personal life and biographical information hidden. Many believe he sometimes attends events showing his films in disguise.

He was involved in the French Resistance during World War II.

Made more than two dozen films during a 6-decade career.

He produced "Far from Vietnam," a 1967 documentary made in collaboration with Godard and Resnais that opposed American involvement in Vietnam.

One of Markers later works, from the late 1990s, was an interactive CD-ROM called "Immemory" that consists of more than 20 hours of stills, film clips, music, text and sound bites divided into several sections, including poetry, cinema, travel and photography.

Studied philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre in the late 1930s.

In 1952 Marker made his first film, Olympia 52, a 16mm feature documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games.

In January 1961, Marker traveled to Cuba and shot the film Cuba S!. The film promotes and defends Fidel Castro and includes two interviews with the Comandante.

Supported Barack Obamas 2008 bid for the US Presidency by making T-Shirts with his famous cat alter ego reading, "Cats go Barack," and donating the proceeds to Obamas campaign.

He died on his 91st birthday.

Quotes

He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function is to leave just a trace in memory.

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments, only later do they make themselves known, from their scars. .

Comments