Chris Marker
Director · 1921 – 2012 · Neuilly-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.
Movies20
Movie7.7DocumentaryFilmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.
Movie7.5DocumentaryA woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Sans soleil
1983 · 275 votes
Movie7.1DocumentaryGerman director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.
Tokyo-Ga
1985 · 106 votes
Movie5.7DocumentaryWhat was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.
La Traversée du désir
2009 · 3 votes
MovieDocumentaryGuided by the evocative narration of Charlotte Rampling, Nostalgia for the Future is a descent into the labyrinthine world of Chris Marker, the “best-known author of unknown films,” who spent a lifetime concealing himself behind a veil of pseudonyms and images of cats. Moving through a constellation of personal documents and film fragments, an archivist attempts to decode the man through the material traces he left behind. By repurposing and recontextualizing Marker’s own body of work, the film treats his images as “time machines,” transforming the archive into a landscape of living memory. Nostalgia for the Future is a meditation on memory, identity, and the power our past images hold over the futures we imagine.
Movie6.3DocumentaryAn intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
A. K.
1985 · 40 votes
Movie6.8DocumentaryHistoryChris Marker and François Reichenbach document the massive anti–Vietnam War protest held in Washington, D.C., on October 21, 1967, where more than 100,000 demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial before marching on the Pentagon. Filmed amid the crowd, the short captures the tension, idealism, and growing radicalism of the American peace movement.
MovieDocumentaryA desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.
Movie8.0DocumentaryCandid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
Movie5.6DocumentaryChris Marker’s Tokyo Days follows the filmmaker and actress Arielle Dombasle as they wander through Tokyo, beginning with an encounter with a live mannequin in a shop window. Mixing casual observation with playful edits, Marker captures everyday scenes—from subways to markets—in a personal video diary of the city.
Tokyo Days
1988 · 8 votes
Movie7.6DocumentaryAgnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive view of the global contemporary art scene.
Movie7.5TV MovieDocumentaryChris Marker’s portrait of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky documents the director at work on his final film, The Sacrifice, during the last year of his life. Interweaving behind-the-scenes footage with excerpts from Tarkovsky’s earlier works, Marker crafts a moving reflection on the artist’s vision, methods, and enduring legacy.
Movie6.9DocumentaryKoumiko Muraoka, a young Japanese woman born in Manchuria and educated in France, wanders through Tokyo while she reflects on identity, memory, and what it means to be Japanese in a rapidly changing world.
Movie7.2DocumentaryFilmmaker William Klein documents the Paris student riots that occurred in May of 1968.
Movie6.1DocumentaryWarLaura, a French programmer, inherits the task of creating a game about the World War II Battle of Okinawa. Her research and interviews with Japanese experts and witnesses prompt her to reflect on life, humanity, and the lasting influence of history and memories.
Level Five
1997 · 32 votes
Movie6.9DocumentaryA faceless traveller takes a journey through the barren reaches of a Siberia caught between tradition and modernity, imparting his philosophical musings on its people and places, wildlife and culture.
MovieDocumentaryA document of Perestroika, to be viewed as (nearly) unedited rushes of a voyage to Moscow, preserved by compatriot Costa-Gavras. Says Émilie Cauquy of the French Cinémathèque, "Astonishing unpublished travel diary, shot by Chris Marker in analog video on the occasion of a screening of L'Aveu in Moscow in 1990 [...] Armed with his camcorder, Marker films and records the comments, takes on the role of contemporary capital according to this unique ethnographic method that he has perfected".
MovieDocumentaryPosthumous portrait of Chris Marker, the elusive French filmmaker- essayist, traveller, photographer and cat-lover. Two filmmakers, Jean-Marie Barbe and Arnaud Lambert, propose a chronological journey through his thoughts and cinematographic work: from the cartography of new political utopia in the 1950s, from Siberia to La Habana, to its relentless defeat, starting with Chile; from his review of cinéma-verité to the great television experience in "L'Héritage de la chouette", which traces a journey through classical Greece, organized into twelve words.
Movie6.3DocumentaryTwo friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.
Movie7.7DocumentaryThis 1973 French documentary explores the conflict between modern values and material comforts in Japan and the more traditional obligations (giri) and culture which are still the real backbone of the society. Among the topics touched on are the Osaka Expo, battles against pollution, and Japanese leftist movements.
Kashima Paradise
1973 · 3 votes