Marker, Chris

(1921- )

   Director and screenwriter. Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, filmmaker Chris Marker is probably one of the best-known and most widely respected documentary filmmakers in the world. He is also one of the few documentary film-makers to be considered an auteur, so individual is his filmmaking style, at once classical and avant-garde, influenced by the ideals of political engagement in French literature from Jean-Paul Sartre on-ward, and underpinned by an interest in philosophy and the workings of memory. Marker's documentaries have dealt with topics as far-ranging as American hegemony, Africa, and the Internet. In recent years, he has grown fairly postmodern in his filmmaking style, experimenting with possibilities for multimedia, the Internet, and film-making.

   Marker was awarded a Golden Berlin Bear for Best Feature-Length Documentary for Description d'un combat in 1961. His documentary, Le joli mai, won Best First Film at the Venice Film Festival in 1963. He won the Prix Jean-Vigo for Best Short Film for his 1953 documentary Les statues meurent aussi (with Alain Resnais)— a film that was banned from commercial cinema for ten years — and won the prize again in 1963 for the short La Jetée. His documentary Cuba Si! (1960) was also banned. In 1983, he won a César for Best Short Documentary for Junkopia. He often traveled abroad to make documentaries; Si j'avais quatre Dromadaires (1966) features photographs from over twenty countries. He produced and codirected the documentary Loin du Vietnam (1967). His first independently directed film was Dimanche à Pékin (1955).

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins