Chris Marker

In Chris Marker’s Studio by Agnès Varda is a rare and beautiful moment in cinema where two friends — who happen to be pioneering, legendary filmmakers from the French New Wave — meet in real life and in a virtual world. In the film, which was shot at two points between 2009-2011, Agnès Varda visits Chris Marker in his studio, a few years before his passing. She admires his magnificent mess, snooping around for details that reveal “the hidden side of Marker’s work”: a labyrinth of wires and computer equipment, a collection of images, magazines, and books, and — of course — cats. The film takes on a wonderful surrealist turn when Varda creates an avatar to meet Marker’s avatar in the online virtual world of Second Life.Read More »

The movie that inspired Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, Chris Marker’s La jetée is a landmark of science-fiction filmmaking, a 28-minute masterpiece told almost entirely in still frames.

Set in a post-apocalyptic near-future, it tells the story of an unnamed man whose vivid childhood recollections make him the perfect guinea pig for an experiment in time travel. After a lengthy and nightmarish period of conditioning, he is sent into the past, where he falls in love with a woman whom he once saw on a pier. At the experiment’s conclusion, he is visited by an advanced race, who offer him the opportunity to journey into their future world, but he instead requests that they send him permanently into the past, where he can remain with the woman of his dreams. A singular experience.Read More »

In 1999, Chris Marker questions Bajram Rexhepi, the new Albanian mayor of Mitrovica (Kosovo) on the conflict which comes from within his country and in which he took part as a surgeon. His lucid analysis of the recent situation and the requirements to join together so that true peace settles, raises hope.Read More »

Marker’s concern with war’s effect on civilians has been a feature of his work since the 1960s. This politically direct tape looks at the function of media for a viewership that has been stripped of a homeland. In the vandalized ruins of an army barracks in Roska, Slovenia, lives a community of Bosnian refugees. What they know of world events comes from a unique video workshop run by fellow refugees who pirate signals from CNN, Radio Sarajevo, and Sky News. The young production team, most of whom had no prior experience with program making, underline how the warring factions’ abuses of media make them suspicious of all news output; at the same time, they exhibit sincere aspirations to provide a genuine documentary of refugee life.Read More »

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In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the France 2 news show Envoyé spécial sent Chris Marker to East Berlin in the lead-up to the first free elections in decades. BERLINER BALLADE is the film Marker made, but the program which commissioned it never aired it in its entirety.

Marker takes us onto the streets of Berlin—showing crowds of pedestrians, sausage vendors, even people creating fake Berlin Wall souvenirs to sell. He juxtaposes these images with archival footage of the wall and its surroundings, Hitler in a triumphant motorcade, and a stark row of crosses bearing the names (when known) and date of death of those killed trying to cross over into East Germany.Read More »

Kashima Paradise
Coréalisé avec Bénie Deswarte, 1973, 16 mm, 106 min 26
Entre Kashima et Tokyo, se construit vers 1970 l’aéroport de Narita : les paysans refusent de vendre leurs terres et affrontent les gardes mobiles envoyés pour les expulser

Between Kashima and Tokyo, Narita airport is built around 1970: the rural people refuse to sell their land and confront the mobile guards sent to evict them.

This 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. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

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This is a 26 minute short film by Chris Marker, where he interviews and records the, “Lucid testimony of François Cremieux, blue helmet in 1994 in the pocket of Bilac,” in Bosnia-Herzogovina By referring to him as a “blue helmet” they mean that he is a UN peacekeeper. Cremieux tells the story about his experiences in Bosnia, as still photographs are injected between the interview footage.Read More »

A collection of three short ‘haiku videos’ by Chris Marker.

The first haiku, ‘Yanka / Tchaika’, shows the river Seine passing under a bridge. A bird in flight stays motionless in the air.

The second haiku, ‘Owl Gets in Your Eyes’, shows Catherine Belkhodja smoking a cigarette while a superimposed shot of an owl in flight fades in and out over her face.Read More »

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This interview with Castoriadis was conducted in 1989 by famed filmmaker Chris Marker for Marker’s own television series L’héritage de la chouette (“The Owl’s Legacy”). Eighty-one minutes long, the raw footage originally recorded in French has been translated into English (via easy-to-read subtitles) and edited anonymously as a public service. Here, Castoriadis lays out and examines the contributions of ancient Greece to questions of contemporary relevance relating to democracy, politics, philosophy, art, poetry, economic and social reorganization, and the creative chaos that underlies all existence.Read More »