Chris Marker: Commentaires 1 & 2 (1961, 1967) [French]

The first volume contains the 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!. Another three follow in the second one: Le mystère Koumiko (1965), Soy Mexico [an unfilmed project] (1965), and Si j’avais quatre dromedaires (1966). The text is accompanied by still images from the films.

Publisher Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1961 & 1967
190 and 169 pages

Marker at Monoskop wiki

PDF (added on 2014-1-15)
PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)

Catherine Lupton: Chris Marker. Memories of the Future (2005)

Chris Marker is one of the most extraordinary and influential film-makers of our time. In landmark films such as Letter from Siberia (1958), La Jetée (1962), Sans Soleil (1982) and Level Five (1996), he overturned the conventions of the cinema, confounding normal distinctions between documentary and fiction, private and public concerns, writing and visual recording, and the still and moving image. Yet these works are only the better-known elements of a protean career that to date has spanned the second half of the twentieth century and encompassed writing, photography, film-making, video, television and the expanding field of digital multimedia.

Catherine Lupton traces the development and transformation of Marker’s work from the late 1940s, when he began to work as a poet, novelist and critic for the French journal Esprit, through to the 1990s, and the release of his most recent works: the feature film Level Five and the CD–ROM Immemory. She incorporates the historical events, shifts and cultural contexts that most productively illuminate the different phases of Marker’s career. He stands out as a singular figure whose work resists easy assimilation into the mainstream of cultural and cinematic trends.

Marker’s oeuvre moves in circles, with each project recycling and referring back to earlier works and to a host of other adopted texts, and proceeds by way of oblique association and lateral digression. This circular movement is ideally suited to capturing and mapping Marker’s abiding and consummate obsession: the forms and operations of human memory. Chris Marker: Memories of the Future itself aims to capture something of this movement, in forming a comprehensive analysis and overview of this modern master’s prolific and multi-faceted career.

Publisher Reaktion Books, 2005
ISBN 1861892233, 9781861892232
256 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)

Ricardo Greene, Iván Pinto (eds.): La zona Marker (2013) [Spanish]

This tribute book to Chris Marker is “divided into three chapters, each one of them dedicated to a different cutting edge point that can be found throughout his life and works: the first is about the committed militant and includes articles by Trevor Stark, Carolina Amaral De Aguiar and Chris Marker himself; the second deals with the explorer who ventures into unknown cultures, with unedited works by María Paz Peirano, Maria Luisa Ortega and Gonzalo De Lucas; the third and last is about his innovative use of the audiovisual language and includes edited essays by Raymond Bellour, Eduardo Russo and Wolfgang Bongers. Furthermore, an introductory piece by the editors and a letter by Patricio Guzmán, besides illustrations and video frames is included. This is a book not just for the fan, but for anyone who wants to delve into the vague fringes of his lasting legacy.”

“El 29 de julio de 2012, día en que cumplía 91 años, Chris Marker muere en Francia por causas desconocidas. Fuera de ambas fechas, nacimiento y muerte, poco puede decirse de él con seguridad; sin ir más lejos, ni siquiera su nombre. Nacido como Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, en Youtube era Kosinski, en Flickr era Sandor Krasna y en sus películas firmó como Jacopo Berenzi, Fritz Markassin y Hayao Yamaneko. Su obra también rehuyó la etiqueta facíl, combinando ficción, documental, experimental, video arte e incluso ciencia ficción, y ensayando con cine, fotografía, caricaturas, instalaciones, animaciones y realidad virtual. Con todas ellas hizo mezclas inesperadas, camuflando y transmutando elementos hasta que sólo quedaran rastros y ruinas.

A través de once ensayos inéditos provenientes de diversas latitudes, el presente libro aborda la compleja y prolífica figura de Marker en sus multiples variantes. Una mirada critica a una obra tan inasible como las sombras del siglo que exploró.”

Publisher FIDOCS, Santiago de Chile, 2013
ISBN 9789569069024
177 pages
via ChrisMarker.org

Publisher

PDF (6 MB)
Academia.edu