Chris Marker , pseudonym of Christian-François Stop-Villeneuve is a documentary writer, photographer and realizer born July 29th 1921 with Neuilly-sur-Seine (France). Its most famous films are the Pier , the Fund of the air is red and Without sun .
Its international repute came with the Short film the Pier (1962), which tells scientific experiments to accomplish temporal voyages in an post-apocalyptic world. The only fiction of Marker is paradoxically its most known work and only from which he says to learn only with regret the diffusion. The shape of this film is that of an assembly of still images, whose a continuation results from “photographs” conferring a completely particular and deeply original atmosphere to him, though disconcerting. Thanks to the process of the comment in voice off , that Marker uses in many its works, the author manages to make pass in its film its literary talent. This style releases an extraordinary emotion with the soft-bitter tonality, which undoubtedly made it beg by Alexandre Medvedkine, elder of Marker which will pay homage in to him the tomb of Alexandre, to make the effort write “a little, only a little”. However, one of the rare books of Marker, the novel the heart Net , remains untraceable today because of will of its author whom this work is not read. the pier inspires inter alia Terry Gilliam for its Armée with the twelve monkeys .
In 1982, Without sun extends the limits of the “documentary” kind. It is a Essai, a Montage, mixing parts of documentary and fiction with philosophical comments. This mixture creates an atmosphere of dream and Science-fiction. The main themes are the Japan, the memory and the voyage. The title of film is drawn from the cycle of songs Without sun of Modest Mussorgsky.
With Without sun , Marker develops an unquestionable interest for the digital techniques, which carries out it to carry out the film Level Five with the actress Catherine Belkhodja that it puts in scene around a reflection on the battle of Okinawa. Although often classified wrongly like documentary, this film in is not less one fiction mingled with truths testimonys on the battle with Okinawa. Catherine Belkhodja will be also the central figure of a splendid video installation, ordered to commemorate the Centenary of the Cinema: Silent Movie (this exposure will make the round the world tour of the largest museums but presented forever in France) and IMMEMORY ONE (1998), a CD-ROM multi-media interactive, produced by the National center of art and culture Georges-Pompidou.
All the films of Chris Marker are committed politically and want to be revolutionary (in the broad sense). Beijing, Cuba, Siberia (communist) is the places of predilection of its documentary. He treated much topics of the fight against oppression (war, conflicts, Vietnam, Bosnia-Herzégovine), of the trade-union and working fight. pretty May is thus an at the same time moral and sociological chronicle on Paris of the years 1960, which pre-empts the events of May 1968, and which more precisely tackles the problem of the perception of the independence of Algeria in metropolis and the lawsuit of the generals of the putsch of Algiers (which was held in Paris six years before in May 1962), or the bottom of the air is red , grouping SLON (Company of Launching of New Works. SLON also means “Russian elephant”). One of its first documentary, the statues dies also , Co-realized by Alain Resnais is a test on the reception of the African works of art in metropolis and is very influenced by the topic malraussien of the “imaginary Museum”. Through the idea that the colonial system autolégitime politically by maintaining a anti-history point of view of on the traditions and the inheritance of the people of which it ensures the administration, the film binds in the same movement the denunciation of the cultural imperialism and the criticism of the dysfunction economic rising from this type of mode - what explains its long censure in France.
It also carried out various portraits of scenario writers like One day of Andrei Arsenevitch on Andrei Tarkovsky and A.K on Akira Kurosawa.
Chris Marker currently lives with Paris and does not give an interview, thus maintaining the mystery which surrounds its character. One learns nevertheless much on him through his works, and from this point of view the CD-ROM Immemory is undoubtedly that where it reveals the most intimate things, in particular through the evocations of memories of childhood - Marker refers to Proust besides, undoubtedly finding in the constant reflection of the novelist over the memory and time matter with reflection on the topics which haunt its own works.
Its films are regularly projected in France, about fifteen of them are visible with the Forum of the images in a permanent way.
Olympia 52 (1952), 82 min
the heart Net, collection " Esprit" , the Threshold, Paris (1949)
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