Chris Marker

From Monoskop
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Born July 29, 1921(1921-07-29)
Neuilly-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, France
Died July 29, 2012(2012-07-29) (aged 91)
Paris, France
Web UbuWeb, Aaaaarg, Wikipedia, Academia.edu, Open Library

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

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

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)

Episode 1: Symposium, or Accepted Ideas


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 2: Olympics, or Imaginary Greece


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 3: Democracy, or the City of Dreams


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 4: Nostalgia, or the Impossible Return


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 5: Amnesia, or History on the March


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 6: Mathematics, or the Empire Counts Back


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 7: Logomachy, or the Dialect of the Tribe


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 8: Music, or Inner Space


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 9: Cosmogony, or the Ways of the World


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 10: Mythology, or Lies like Truth


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 11: Misogyny, or the Snares of Desire


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 12: Tragedy, or the Illusion of Death


26 min. Download (WEBM)

Episode 13: Philosophy, or the Triumph of the Owl


16 of 26 min (incomplete). Download (WEBM)
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

(directed films; in French unless noted otherwise)

Feature-length films
  • Olympia 52, 1952.
  • Lettre de Sibérie [Letter From Siberia], 1957.
  • Le Joli mai, with Pierre Lhomme, 1962.
  • Cinétracts, with Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, silent, 1968.
  • La bataille des dix millions, 1970.
  • Le train en marche, 1971.
  • La Solitude du chanteur de fond, 1974.
  • L'Ambassade, 1975.
  • Le fond de l’air est rouge [Grin Without a Cat], 1977. (link to a version with EN audio & EN subs), Part 2
  • Sans soleil, 1982.
  • A.K, 1984.
  • L'Héritage de la chouette, 1989.
  • Le tombeau d’Alexandre, 1992. [1]
  • Level five, 1996.
Short films
  • Les Statues meurent aussi [Statues Also Die], with Alain Resnais, 1953, 30 min. (link to a version with EN subs)
  • Dimanche à Pékin, 1956.
  • Description d’un combat, 1960.
  • Cuba si!, 1961.
  • La Jetée, 1962.
  • Le Mystère Koumiko, 1965.
  • Si j'avais 4 dromadaires, 1966, 49 min.
  • A bientôt, j’espère, with Mario Marret, 1967.
  • La Sixième face du pentagone, with François Reichenbach, 1968.
  • Le Deuxième procès d’Artur London, 1969.
  • Jour de tournage, 1969.
  • On vous parle du Brésil, 1969.
  • Carlos Marighela, 1970.
  • Les Mots ont un sens, 1970.
  • Vive la baleine, with Mario Ruspoli, 1972.
  • On vous parle du Chili, 1973.
  • Puisqu’on vous dit que c’est possible, 1973.
  • Junkopia, with John Chapman and Frank Simeone, 1981.
  • 2084, 1984. (link to a version with EN subs)
  • Une journée d’Andrei Arsenevitch, 1999.
  • Le Souvenir d'un avenir [Remembrance of Things to Come], with Yannick Bellon, 2001, 42 min. (with ES subs)
  • Chats perchés, 2004.
Other
Commentaires 1-2. Log.

Writings

  • 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)
  • 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)

Literature

Links