Chris Marker

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Chris Marker (actually Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve ; born July 29, 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Île-de-France , † July 29, 2012 in Paris ) was a French writer , photographer and documentary filmmaker . His best-known films are the film On the Edge of the Runway and Sans Soleil - Invisible Sun - assembled from photos .

Life

Chris Marker studied philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre . During the Second World War he participated in the French Resistance . After the war he began to write and make films, before that he published a novel and a volume of poetry. He traveled to many socialist countries and documented what he saw in films and books. Les statues meurent aussi (1953), a film about the theft of art by Europeans in Africa, which he made with Alain Resnais , was one of the first anti-colonialist films.

In January 1961, the convinced Marxist turned during a two week Cuba his documentary -Aufenthaltes Cuba Sí, with whom he the of him as unjustified negative perceived French media coverage of Fidel Castro wanted to give a positive counterweight. The film, which celebrated both the policies of the Cuban revolutionary leadership and the defeat of the US-backed Cuban exile invasion of the Bay of Pigs , was banned from showing by the French government, which was leading the Algerian war at the time , which was lifted in 1963. Marker, who again dealt with Cuba in his films La Bataille des dix millions (1970) and Rot ist die blau Luft (1977), later distanced himself from Fidel Castro's rule and decreed that Cuba Sí should no longer be shown during his lifetime . In his depiction of Castro in red is the blue air , according to Nora Alter, Marker traces the "slow corruption of ideals and the dissolution of dreams".

His short film On the Edge of the Runway , shot in 1962, is the model for the 1995 science fiction film Twelve Monkeys directed by Terry Gilliam . Marker's film also gained a greater degree of popularity through its success.

In his travel and essay film Sans soleil (1983), which combines fictional elements with essayistic-philosophical commentaries, Marker uses his own and other documentary recordings, for example from Japan and Africa, which, through the commentary of the fictional author and the montage, experience some poetic shifts in meaning and thus be seen in a new or different way by the viewer. He reflects on the medium of film itself, its conditions, but also time and rhythm, melancholy and memory. The tone finds a middle position between serious analysis and detailed curiosity and playfulness.

Since the 1980s, Marker showed great interest in electronic media (from digital image editing to video games), which shaped the essay film Level Five (1996) with actress Catherine Belkhodja , a kind of sequel to Silent Movie , and in the multimedia CD-Rom Immemory (1996, produced for the Center Pompidou) culminates. Another work, the video report Chats Perchés , dealt with the public space of Paris between September 2001 and autumn 2003: On the one hand, it is a search for the cats that suddenly appear everywhere in Paris as graffiti figures, on the other, Chris follows Markers the political events of the time, which are expressed in demonstrations .

As a filmmaker, Chris Marker felt connected to Andrei Tarkowski and Akira Kurosawa , both of whom he has portrayed in films. Chris Marker lived in Paris and did not give interviews. There are hardly any photos of Marker because he doesn't like being photographed. Chris Marker insisted on writing his name "Chris.Marker", but this has hardly caught on in film publications and dictionaries.

In 1990 he received the Franco-German Journalism Prize for his film Berliner Balladen .

Filmography (as director, selection)

  • 1952: Olympia 52
  • 1953: Les Statues meurent aussi
  • 1956: Dimanche à Pekin
  • 1957: Lettre de Sibérie
  • 1959: Les Astronautes
  • 1960: Description d'un combat
  • 1961: ¡Cuba Sí!
  • 1962: At the edge of the runway (La Jetée)
  • 1963: Le joli mai
  • 1965: Le Mystère Koumiko
  • 1966: Si j'avais quatre dromadaires
  • 1967: Loin du Vietnam
  • 1967: Rhodiacéta
  • 1968: La Sixième face du pentagone
  • 1968: Cinétracts
  • 1968: À bientôt, j'espère
  • 1969: On vous parle du Brésil
  • 1969: Jour de tournage
  • 1969: Classe de Lutte
  • 1970: Les Mots ont un sens
  • 1970: Carlos Marighela
  • 1971: La Bataille des dix millions
  • 1971: Le Train en marche
  • 1971: On vous parle de Prague: le deuxième procès d'Artur London
  • 1972: Vive la baleine
  • 1973: L'Ambassade
  • 1974: La Solitude du chanteur de fond
  • 1977: Le Fond de l'air est rouge (Eng .: red is the blue air )
  • 1981: Junkopia
  • 1983: Sans Soleil - Invisible Sun (Sans soleil)
  • 1984: 2084
  • 1985: From Chris to Christo
  • 1985: AK
  • 1986: Mémoires pour Simone
  • 1990: Berlin ballads
  • 1992: Le Tombeau d'Alexandre
  • 1997: Level Five with Catherine Belkhodja
  • 2000: One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich
  • 2001: Le Souvenir d'un avenir with Yannick Bellon
  • 2004: Chats Perchés
  • 2011: Stopover in Dubai

literature

  • Liem, Ronco Y., Chris Marker and “La Jetee” , Columbia Univ. Teachers College, Diss., 1983
  • Experiments on the essay film: Films by Chris Marker, Alexander Kluge , Hartmut Bitomsky , Harun Farocki , Ioris Ivens , Derek Jarman , Johan van der Keuken , ed. by Hanno Möbius, Marburg: Inst. für Neuere Dt. Literature, 1991
  • Marker, Chris, La Jetee. Cine-roman , Bilingual Edition (English, French), New York, Zone Books, 1996
  • Chris Marker, film essayist , ed. by Birgit Kämper and Thomas Tode, Munich: Institut Français / CICIM, 1997, No. 45–47, 379 pp.
  • Laurent Roth, Raymond Bellour, A propos du CD-ROM Immemory de Chris Marker , Paris: Gevaert [u. a.], 1997
  • "... they just want to be what they are, namely pictures ...": Connections to Chris Marker , ed. by Natalie Binczek and Martin Rass, Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1999
  • Scherer, Christina, Ivens, Marker, Godard, Jarman - Memory in the Essay Film , Munich: Fink, 2001
  • Recherches sur Chris Marker , sous la direction de Philippe Dubois, Paris: Pr.Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002
  • Lupton, Catherine, Chris Marker: memories of the future , London: Reaction Books, 2005
  • Leconte, Bernard, Approche d'un film mythique: La jetée, Chris Marker, 1963; quarante ans après , Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005
  • Alter, Nora M., Chris Marker , Urbana, Ill .: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2006
  • Chris Marker. Comments 1, Comments 2 , trans. by E. Brinkmann u. R. Felka. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose , 2014 ISBN 978-3-940048-22-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Founder of the essay film: Filmmaker Chris Marker is dead. In: Der Spiegel , July 30, 2012. Accessed August 23, 2014.
  2. ^ Catherine Lupton: Chris Marker: Memories of the Future. P. 72, reaction Books, London 2005 (English)
  3. ↑ Thomas Sotinel: Mort de Chris Marker, réalisateur de "La Jetée" et "Sans Soleil", in: LeMonde.fr of July 30, 2012, accessed on April 29, 2014 (French)
  4. ↑ Chris Marker in Latin and South America. Filmkollektiv Frankfurt, 2014, accessed on April 29, 2014
  5. ↑ Nora M. Alter: Chris Marker. P. 69
personal data
SURNAME Marker, Chris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bouche-Villeneuve, Christian-François (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, photographer and documentary filmmaker
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuilly-sur-Seine , Île-de-France, France
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 2012
Place of death Paris