Chris Marker
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Born |
July 29, 1921 Neuilly-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, France |
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Died |
July 29, 2012 Paris, France | (aged 91)
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."
Contents
- 1 Works
- 1.1 The Forthright Spirit (Le cœur net)
- 1.2 The Owl's Legacy (L'Héritage de la chouette)
- 1.2.1 Episode 1: Symposium, or Accepted Ideas
- 1.2.2 Episode 2: Olympics, or Imaginary Greece
- 1.2.3 Episode 3: Democracy, or the City of Dreams
- 1.2.4 Episode 4: Nostalgia, or the Impossible Return
- 1.2.5 Episode 5: Amnesia, or History on the March
- 1.2.6 Episode 6: Mathematics, or the Empire Counts Back
- 1.2.7 Episode 7: Logomachy, or the Dialect of the Tribe
- 1.2.8 Episode 8: Music, or Inner Space
- 1.2.9 Episode 9: Cosmogony, or the Ways of the World
- 1.2.10 Episode 10: Mythology, or Lies like Truth
- 1.2.11 Episode 11: Misogyny, or the Snares of Desire
- 1.2.12 Episode 12: Tragedy, or the Illusion of Death
- 1.2.13 Episode 13: Philosophy, or the Triumph of the Owl
- 2 Literature
- 3 External links
Works
The Forthright Spirit (Le cœur net)
Chris Marker's debut novel. The book received a Prix Onion in 1950.
Originally published in French by Le Seuil, Paris, in 1949. It was translated to English by Robert Kee and Terence Kilmartin and published by Allan Wingate, London, in 1951.
"His friend Alain Resnais recalls that Marker favored a 1951 English translation of his novel because it had so little resemblance to the original." (source)
Download the English edition in PDF.
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, commissioned by S.E.P.T. and financed by the Onassis Foundation The Owl's Legacy was never broadcasted, probably not having matched the Foundation's expectations. Searching for the western cultural foundations in the ancient Greece, the 13 episodes of this TV mini-series explore the lost resonances of thirteen words, ideas that function today in a problematic relation both with their linguistic root as well as in their customary role and exercise. (source of the text)
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
- 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
- chrismarker.org.
- Uncut version of the interview with Cornelius Castoriadis, video, 81 min. Commentary.
Literature
- Books by Marker
- Chris Marker, Commentaires 1, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1961. Transcripts of six films by Marker: Les Statues meurent aussi, Dimanche à Pékin, Lettre de Sibérie, L'Amérique rêvée, Description d'un combat and Cuba Si!. (in French)
- Chris Marker, Commentaires 2, Paris: Éditions du 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). (in French)
- Chris Marker: Around the World with Chris Marker: Lost Horizons / Time Regained, Film Comment, May-June and July-August 2003. Two-part feature on Marker.
- Books about Marker
- Geneviève Daphne Van Cauwenberge, Chris Marker and Documentary Filmmaking: 1962-1982, Phd Thesis, 1992
- Catherine Lupton, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future, Reaktion Books, 2005.
External links
- Chris Marker at Monoskop Log
- Chris Marker at UbuWeb, includes his Junkopia (1981)
- ChrisMarker.org
- Chris Marker at Wikipedia
- Finn Brunton, "Chris Marker, 1921–2012: Future anterior", Radical Philosophy 176, Nov/Dec 2012.