Chris Marker

Sans Soleil

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

Release Date1983-03-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self (uncredited)

Vote Count250

A. K.

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

Release Date1985-05-20

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self - Narrator (voice)

Vote Count35

One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich

A documentary about the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was an episode of the French documentary film series Filmmakers of our time. The title of the film is a play on the title of Solzhenitsyn's novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Release Date1999-05-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self (voice) (uncredited)

Vote Count10

The Lovely Month of May

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.

Release Date1963-05-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self / Interviewer (voice)

Vote Count41

Letter from Siberia

A faceless traveller takes a journey through the barren reaches of a Siberia caught between tradition and modernity, imparting his philosophical musings on its people and places, wildlife and culture.

Release Date1957-05-16

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Stargazer (uncredited)

Vote Count27

Level Five

Laura, a French programmer, inherits the task of creating a game about the World War II Battle of Okinawa. Her research and interviews with Japanese experts and witnesses prompt her to reflect on life, humanity, and the lasting influence of history and memories.

Release Date1997-02-19

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self (voice) (uncredited)

Vote Count29

The Koumiko Mystery

While filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French educated, she's an intriguing anomaly. He films her around Tokyo, as she speaks of Japan, being Japanese and her unique perspective on life.

Release Date1965-10-09

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Narrator

Vote Count9

Tokyo Days

This idiosyncratic view of Tokyo begins with a live mannequin in a store window and French actress Arielle Dombasle chatting with Marker as they wander around Tokyo. After Dombasle departs, the tape continues with footage from the Tokyo subway and an indoor market. Marker punctuates the tape throughout with playful visual and sound edits.

Release Date1988-07-06

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self (voice) (uncredited)

Vote Count6

Ten Lives of a Cat: A Film about Chris Marker

Ten years after the death of iconic French filmmaker, Chris Marker. A filmmaker, hoping to rediscover that unique sensibility against the uncertainty of the new century, returns to the places synonymous with those incomparable and unforgettable films-- From the cat cemetery of Sans Soleil, to the mausoleum of The Last Bolshevik; The caves of Level Five to the rooftops of The Case of the Grinning Cat. A biographical portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers.

Release Date2023-10-31

Charactersd Kaibyō (archive footage)

Kashima Paradise

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.

Release Date1973-04-10

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Charactersd Narrator (voice)

Vote Count2

La Traversée du désir

What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.

Release Date2009-03-16

Charactersd Self

Vote Count3

The Beaches of Agnès

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

Release Date2008-12-17

Charactersd Self (archive footage)

Vote Count129

May Days

Filmmaker William Klein documents the Paris student riots that occurred in May of 1968.

Release Date1978-01-01

Charactersd Self

Vote Count6

Tokyo-Ga

German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.

Release Date1985-04-24

Charactersd Self (uncredited)

Vote Count92

Agnès Varda: From Here to There

Agnès Varda travels around the world to meet friends, artists and filmmakers for an expansive view of the global contemporary art scene.

Release Date2011-10-01

Charactersd Self

Vote Count5

The Invention of Chris Marker

A desktop documentary about the online afterlife of the late French filmmaker, Chris Marker.

Release Date2020-05-28

Charactersd Self

Chris Marker: Never Explain, Never Complain

Posthumous portrait of Chris Marker, the elusive French filmmaker- essayist, traveller, photographer and cat-lover. Two filmmakers, Jean-Marie Barbe and Arnaud Lambert, propose a chronological journey through his thoughts and cinematographic work: from the cartography of new political utopia in the 1950s, from Siberia to La Habana, to its relentless defeat, starting with Chile; from his review of cinéma-verité to the great television experience in "L'Héritage de la chouette", which traces a journey through classical Greece, organized into twelve words.

Release Date2015-08-25

Charactersd Self (archive footage)

Rush - Voyage à Moscou

A document of Perestroika, to be viewed as (nearly) unedited rushes of a voyage to Moscow, preserved by compatriot Costa-Gavras. Says Émilie Cauquy of the French Cinémathèque, "Astonishing unpublished travel diary, shot by Chris Marker in analog video on the occasion of a screening of L'Aveu in Moscow in 1990 [...] Armed with his camcorder, Marker films and records the comments, takes on the role of contemporary capital according to this unique ethnographic method that he has perfected".

Release Date1990-02-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Charactersd Self

In Chris Marker's Studio

Two friends (and legendary French New Wave filmmakers) meet in real and virtual worlds.

Release Date2011-12-19

Charactersd Self

Vote Count5

Lumière Award to Chris Marker

This silent film shows the jury voting for Chris Marker, who receives the Louis Lumière award for his film ¡Cuba sí!

Release Date1962-03-03

Charactersd Self

Twelve Monkeys

In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and the son of a famous virus expert who may hold the key to the Army of the 12 Monkeys; thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.

Release Date1995-12-29

DepartmentWriting

JobOriginal Film Writer

Vote Count8659

The Zone

Looking for a long lost friend, Madeleine talks to a Stalker so that he can take her to «the zone» and help her look into her memories to find him at last. Essay-film hommage to Chris Marker.

Release Date2017-10-05

DepartmentWriting

JobShort Story

La Jetée

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

Release Date1962-02-16

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count940

Broadway by Light

An experimental meditation on Times Square's marquees and iconic advertising that captures the concurrently seedy and dazzling aspects of New York's Great White Way.

Release Date1958-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count24

Far from Vietnam

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.

Release Date1967-10-18

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count22

America as Seen by a Frenchman

At the end of the 1950s, French documentarian François Reichenbach spent eighteen months traveling the United States, documenting its diverse regions, their inhabitants, and their pastimes. The result is a journey through a multitude of different Americas, filtered through a French sensibility.

Release Date1960-06-08

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count10

The Confession

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.

Release Date1970-04-29

DepartmentCamera

JobStill Photographer

Vote Count129

The Owl's Legacy

THE OWL’S LEGACY is an intellectually agile, engaging, and sometimes biting look at ancient Greece, its influences on Western culture—and how many eras have reinterpreted the Greek legacy to reflect their own needs. Each of the 13 episodes is centered on a potent Greek word: from “democracy” and “philosophy” to “mythology” and “misogyny.” Marker convenes and films symposia—meals featuring wine and thoughtful conversation—in locales including Paris, Tokyo, Tbilisi, Berkeley, and an olive grove on Athens’ outskirts. Footage from these banquets is interspersed with archival materials and interviews (often featuring a stylized or distorted owl image looming in the background). Marker’s diverse group of informants includes composers, politicians, classicists, historians, scientists, writers, filmmakers, and actors. Together their contributions form a compelling (and sometimes contradictory) cultural and historical exploration for each theme.

Release Date1989-06-12

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count13

Vote Count4

The Case of the Grinning Cat

Paris 2002. Yellow cats appear on the walls. Chris Marker is looking for these mysterious cats and captures with his camera the political and international events of these last two years (war in Iraq...).

Release Date2006-12-20

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count15

Cinétracts

A series of 43 documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers and each running between two and four minutes. Each "tract" espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers' strikes and the events of Paris in May '68.

Release Date1968-05-31

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count6

Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Release Date1959-04-27

DepartmentDirecting

JobAssistant Director

Vote Count516

A Grin Without a Cat

French essay film focusing on global political turmoil in the 1960s and '70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America.

Release Date1977-11-23

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count24

20 Little Films

Each year since 1995, the Viennale has asked a great, international director to make his or her own personal contribution to the festival: a contribution in the form of a small, approximately one-minute film, which is used as a kind of introduction to the festival. The concept of this "little films" (as Jonas Mekas once called them) is more to create a short, autonomous work, a cinematic moment that stands alone and for nothing and no-one else. Over the years this has resulted in a series of absolutely unique, exceptional works. Each director has created his/her own cinematic world between home movie and political essay, music film and minimal étude, mysterious story and radical, aesthetic abstraction on those little films, that will now be shown together for the first time on the occasion of the Viennale’s great 50th anniversary, premiering at the Locarno Film Festival.

Release Date2012-02-13

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Django Reinhardt

One of the first filmed portraits of a jazz musician.

Release Date1957-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count3

If I Had Four Dromedaries

Composed entirely of still photographs shot by Marker himself over the course of his restless travel through twenty-six countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries stages a probing, at times agitated, search for the meanings of the photographic image, in the form of an extended voiceover conversation and debate between the "amateur photographer" credited with the images and two of his colleagues. Anticipating later writings by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag (who professed her admiration for the film) If I Had Four Dromedaries reveals Marker's instinctual understanding of the secret rapport between still and moving image.

Release Date1966-11-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count11

Sunday in Peking

Director Chris Marker begins by recounting his childhood dream of visiting the city of Peking - a city he was once only able to admire in books. The viewer is taken on a journey through this city, as if experiencing it from the mind and through the eyes of Marker. His thoughts and observations about the traditions, history, and banalities of everyday life in Peking are woven together in elegant fashion.

Release Date1956-11-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count21

Valparaiso

In 1962 Joris Ivens was invited to Chile for teaching and filmmaking. Together with students he made …A Valparaíso, one of his most poetic films. Contrasting the prestigious history of the seaport with the present the film sketches a portrait of the city, built on 42 hills, with its wealth and poverty, its daily life on the streets, the stairs, the rack railways and in the bars. Although the port has lost its importance, the rich past is still present in the impoverished city. The film echoes this ambiguous situation in its dialectical poetic style, interweaving the daily life reality (of 1963) with the history of the city and changing from black and white to colour, finally leaving us with hopeful perspective for the children who are playing on the stairs and hills of this beautiful town.

Release Date1964-08-31

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count54

The Mystery of Workshop 15

A documentary film about occupational diseases shot in 1957 at the Francolor factory in Oissel. It takes the form of a scientific investigation to discover the origin of a mysterious illness that has infected a worker at the factory.

Release Date1957-01-02

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

You Speak of Prague: The Second Trial of Artur London

Artur London was arrested in 1951 in a Stalinist purge, imprisoned and tortured for two years and forced to confess in the Slansky Trial, one of the last Stalinist "show trials" in Eastern Europe. The documentary explores some of the reasons for the controversy aroused by Costa-Gavras' The Confession, which had been accused of being anti-communist, and it highlights the political importance of filmmaking which, by its nature, is a fiction intended for the general public.

Release Date1971-06-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

Des Hommes Dans Le Ciel

Release Date1958-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

A Year of TV Seen by Guillaume

Like more and more internet users, if you didn't watch TV in 2007, you'll think twice about it in 2008. Because Guillaume-en-Egypte, Chris Marker's freelance cat, has watched it a lot; from Al Jazeera to CNN via Russian television and animal channels. And he came out unscathed, even offering us a special zapping.

Release Date2007-11-08

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Report on Brazil: Carlos Marighella

On November the 4th 1969, Carlos Marighella is caught in an ambush and killed by the bullets of 80 policemen armed with revolvers and machine guns. He was considered public enemy number 1 by the Brazilian military dictatorship, which believed that it could quell the urban guerilla movement by liquidating him. This movie, made after his death, reconstructs, through interviews with road companions and friends, the life and political struggle of Carlos Marighella.

Release Date1970-10-20

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Concours de rêve : La Clé des songes

This show sits at a crossroad of radio and cinema. The viewers are invited to tell their dreams and if they are selected, the authors "oniromancians with camera" put them in scene (hence the dream contest).

Release Date1950-01-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count6

Berlin 1990

Some months after the fall of the Berlin wall, during the time of federal elections in Germany in 1990, Chris Marker shot this passionate documentary, reflecting the state of the place and its spirit with remarkable acuity.

Release Date1990-11-08

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

The Sea and the Days

Everyday life of fishermen on Brittany's Ile de Sein.

Release Date1958-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count2

Lluvia de jaulas

Popular neighborhoods that are open-air prisons. Where beauty flirts with violence. The kingdom of the insubordinate children, veterans of the lead. A garden of amputated flowers, which with crutches on their backs, still grow and dance.

Release Date2019-01-23

DepartmentCrew

JobThanks

Vote Count7

La Jétee

A radical re-imagining of French auteur Chris Marker's masterpiece.

Release Date2013-12-13

DepartmentWriting

JobStory

Vote Count1

Description of a Struggle

Working primarily in the arena of nonfiction, Marker rejected conventional narrative techniques, instead staking out a deeply political terrain defined by the use of still images, atmospheric soundtracks, and literate commentary. In Description d’un Combat, Marker’s idiosyncratic style, combining location footage with archival material, builds a complex and personal portrayal. Israel’s demography is explored, from the kibbutzim to the Arab minorities, the orthodox Jews, and the tourists. The “battle” of the title does not refer to the tank-and-artillery variety, but to the inner struggle of Israeli citizens to adapt to a new view of themselves, in a new country.

Release Date1960-06-30

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count13

The Forbidden Volcano

Set in Zaire, the film follows an expedition exploring the crater of the Niragongo volcano of the Virunga chain, whose eruptions are known for their violence and their massive lava flows.

Release Date1966-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Prime Time in the Camps

Prime Time in the Camps is one of a series of Chris Marker’s short films on the war in Yugoslavia. Featuring behind-the-scenes footage of the camp’s TV crews in action, with interviews and excerpts from the TV programs, the film captures the importance of grassroots media and the need for people to share their stories.

Release Date1993-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count5

Theory of Sets

Made entirely on Roger Wagner's HyperStudio software, Chris Marker explores set theory, using Noah's Ark as an example.

Release Date1991-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count5

Ouvroir the Movie

"There’s just no other way to say this: Chris Marker has built a museum in the sky of Second Life. That’s right, Second Life—the vast virtual realm, which since 2003 has enabled users to build, explore, and interact via avatars within a tabula rasa of cyber-geography. It’s not just for weird virtual sex anymore: now it has a touch of Old Media class. At the coordinates 187, 61, 39, on some far-off shimmering shores of “the grid,” lies the island of Ouvroir (which is actually an archipelago). This digital Xanadu is strewn with cat-shaped coves, roving humpbacks, a castle keep, and a downed 747; a massive red orb hovers in the pixelated cerulean firmament above . . . Le Musée de Marker!"

Release Date2010-02-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

On October 21, 1967, over 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. It was the largest protest gathering yet, and it brought together a wide cross-section of liberals, radicals, hippies, and Yippies. Che Guevara had been killed in Bolivia only two weeks previously, and, for many, it was the transition from simply marching against the war, to taking direct action to try to stop the 'American war machine.' Norman Mailer wrote about the events in Armies of the Night. French filmmaker Chris Marker, leading a team of filmmakers, was also there.

Release Date1968-08-26

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count13

Playtime in Paris

Catherine Varlin's 27-minute Playtime in Paris (1962) is almost a practice run for Le joli mai, a sampling that starts in a classroom and then observes various subjects from afar. A woman is compared to a cat, and then we see a little girl on a playground, kissing, hugging and swatting a little boy companion as if he were a doll-plaything. A supermarket is compared to a flea market; an upscale equestrian event is compared to a soccer match, a comic bullfight and other attractions. Marker edited and Lhomme was the cameraman.

Release Date1962-09-14

DepartmentEditing

JobEditor

Green Vinyl

A mother gives her daughter a box full of old, coloured little vinyl records. The daughter may listen to them, but she should never, ever, play the green one.

Release Date2004-11-25

DepartmentCrew

JobThanks

Vote Count32

The Battle of Chile: Part III

Guzmán’s final installment shifts from covering the actions of Allende’s opponents to those who battled to revive & promote their toppled leader’s vision for a new Chile.

Release Date1979-03-15

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count33

Détour Ceausescu

After the Romanian Revolution reached its peak during the Christmas Holidays of 1989, Romania’s Communist patriarch and his wife Elena were sentenced to death by a military court and accordingly gunned down. Chris Marker’s short video-collage Détour Ceauşescu documents how the execution was depicted by France’s national TV-channel TF1.

Release Date1990-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

¡Cuba Sí!

A chronicle of the evolution of the Cuban Revolution, ending with the Bay of Pigs incident and including two interviews with Fidel Castro.

Release Date1961-12-31

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count9

The Heat of a Thousand Suns

A young man from the far future, bored by his surroundings, blasts off into space with only his cat and some robots for company. On a distant planet he discovers a serene, tranquil culture and falls in love with a girl. The story follows his problems adjusting to their sociological standards and customs where family units are comprised of sexual groups of eight people.

Release Date1965-07-21

DepartmentEditing

JobEditor

Vote Count4

Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke

A modern Miami adaptation of the 1962 French short film "La Jetee", the film recounts Luke's (Uncle Luke, legendary rapper from the hip-hop group 2 Live Crew) rise to fame as he changes the face of hip-hop and fights for first amendment rights, and later as he ushers Miami into a golden era of peace and prosperity as Mayor. Everything changes when a nuclear meltdown at Turkey Point Power Plant turns Miami into a radioactive wasteland filled with mutants, and Luke is the only survivor left unscathed.

Release Date2012-04-12

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count3

Be Seeing You

A documentary look at striking workers in a textile plant in Besançon, France, centering on interviews with workers about their motivations for becoming involved with the union and the struggles of their day to day life.

Release Date1968-03-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count6

Junkopia

A short film that shows Boundless, Surreal objects that are juxtaposed with our present World. Cars, Motorways, noise of our modern society; A giant city in the distance - all that shrouds this lonely and forgotten island of Dreams. Filmed at the Emeryville Mudflats near San Francisco.

Release Date1981-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count40

Statues Also Die

Short documentary commissioned by the magazine Présence Africaine. From the question "Why is the African in the anthropology museum while Greek or Egyptian art are in the Louvre?", the directors expose and criticize the lack of consideration for African art. The film was censored in France for eight years because of its anti-colonial perspective.

Release Date1953-05-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count44

The Battle of Chile: Part II

Chronicles the events immediately surrounding the CIA- supported coup itself.

Release Date1976-03-13

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count37

Les Deux mémoires

The two memories

Release Date1974-02-27

DepartmentEditing

JobEditor

Vote Count2

Three Cheers for the Whale

Three Cheers for the Whale chronicles the history of mankind’s relationship with the largest and most majestic of marine mammals, and graphically exposes their slaughter by the fishing industry.

Release Date1972-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count13

Mémoires pour Simone

A wonderful tribute to the great Simone Signoret by Chris Marker. Rare documentary, made by movie clips and narration, with many lines Simone Signoret wrote for her autobiography 'La nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était' (Nostalgia is not what it was anymore).

Release Date1986-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count3

Class of Struggle

A follow-up to the documentary Be Seeing You (À bientôt, j'espère), made by a filmmaking collective in cooperation with the workers that are the film's subject, focusing on a female factory worker who becomes a union organizer.

Release Date1969-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

The Last Bolshevik

A documentary on Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin, examining his tumultuous career, the rediscovery of his masterpiece Happiness, and Russia's struggles over the course of the 20th Century.

Release Date1993-03-25

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count18

Cuba: Battle of the 10,000,000

Documentary about economic development in Cuba, particularly the effort to boost output of sugar cane. This film is made from a compilation of newsreel footage from the Cuban film institute and from Santiago Alvarez's film Despegue a las 18.00 (Departure 18:00).

Release Date1971-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2

The Andrei Tarkovsky Companion

The life and work of Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky is celebrated and explored in three documentary films: Tempo Di Viaggio (1983) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra, Moscow Elegy (1988) directed by Alexander Sokurov, and One Day In The Life Of Andrei Arsenevitch (2000) directed by Chris Marker.

Release Date2007-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Havre

In a port city, a youth plays a computer game that determines the fate of a woman (whose interracial romance is threatened by white punks) and other residents.

Release Date1986-06-04

DepartmentCrew

JobThanks

Vote Count1

Metrotopia

A brief visual journey through the subways of major world cities. Without narration, Marker captures anonymous gestures, repetitive rhythms, and the unique atmosphere of underground urban spaces. A sensory meditation on modern life, the homogenization of environments, and the quiet beauty of places in transit.

Release Date2008-03-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2

Les hommes de la baleine

In a small fishermen's village in the Azores, an enormous whale is being jointed, carved and stocked. Once this task is over, the whalers ready themselves for another hunt, a fascinating but trying and dangerous experience...

Release Date1958-01-01

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count2

Stopover in Dubai

Stopover in Dubai is a chillingly simple – and riveting – found-footage documentary on a reconstructed murder. The original film was produced by the Dubai State Security service, edited from CCTV footage recorded in and around the Dubai hotel where Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead, his room locked from the inside. Al-Mabhoub was a founder of a military branch of Hamas, and was reportedly on Mossad's hit list (though he had other enemies as well). The retrieved footage tracks the team of no less then 26 assassins on their way to the kill. Marker took the film as it is and replaced the news program’s generic, royalty-free, techno-lite soundtrack with a haunting, ominous string composition written by Henryk Górecki for the Kronos Quartet.

Release Date2011-05-05

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Astronauts

An inventor builds a homemade spacecraft, and uses it to have various adventures, including peeping at women, visiting ‘human’ planets, and becoming involved in intergalactic warfare.

Release Date1959-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count41

2084: Video Clip for the Trade Unions' Reflection and Pleasure

Filmed on the 100th anniversary of the labour union laws in France, the quasi-science fiction film is set in 2084. A robot moderator helps us look 'back' at the contemporary labour situation and different directions the movement could take.

Release Date1984-10-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count15

iDead

Video on the mass media response to the bardo-traversing of Steve Jobs. Long live the archive and the archivist.

Release Date2011-10-07

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Cat Listening to Music

Chris Marker films a cat reacting to the sound of a piano playing.

Release Date1988-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

The Embassy

After a military coup d'état, political dissidents seek refuge in a foreign embassy. Over the next few days, they are joined by more and more people who are fleeing the military assault: teachers, students, intellectuals, artists, and politicians.

Release Date1973-12-31

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count18

Remembrance of Things to Come

Through photos made by the French photographer Denise Bellon, a personal history of France.

Release Date2001-09-22

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count12

Silent Movie (Edit 2)

Originally displayed as part of an installation consisting of one metal stand, 5 monitors, 5 laser disc players, a computer face interbox, 5 video discs with 20 min. sequences: The Journey, The Face, Captions, The Gesture, The Waltz; 18 B&W video stills, 10 film posters, and a soundtrack: "The Perfect Tapeur", solo piano pieces lasting 59 min. 32 sec.

Release Date1995-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Singer

This documentary chronicles an Yves Montand concert for Chilean refugees in France.

Release Date1974-12-19

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count6

Matta '85

A portrait of the Chilean artist Roberto Matta leading Marker on a wise and funny private guided tour of his solo exhibition at the Pompidou Center.

Release Date1985-07-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count5

Olympia 52

Olympia 52 is a 1952 French documentary film about the '52 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. Olympia 52 was produced by Peuple et Culture, a nonprofit organization, and it was the first feature-length work directed by the French filmmaker Chris Marker, who also co-wrote the narrative and served as one of the production’s four cinematographers.

Release Date1952-07-10

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

When the Century Took Shape (War and Revolution)

In 1978, just after Le fond de l'Air Est Rouge, which mercilessly analyzed the previous ten years of the revolutionary left's momentum until its collapse, Chris Marker made this complementary piece entitled Quand le Siècle a Pris Forme (Guerre et Révolution).

Release Date1978-07-10

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Bullfight in Okinawa

Chris Marker’s Bullfight in Okinawa is a bizarre, 4 min documentary that introduces viewers to Japan’s subterranean past time of bullfighting. Part of Markers five-film “Bestiary” series, Bullfight employs observational documentary techniques and, in particular, Marker’s camerawork is impressive — tight framed shots, free-hand pans, and quick zooms all contribute to the film’s urgent sense of tension — and, if it weren’t for the suspense inducing music, this short-gem would be damn close to pure objective documentary cinema.

Release Date1994-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

We Maintain It Is Possible

In 1973, after the failure of wage negotiations with the management of the Lip watch factories, the workers went on strike. Marker was responsible for assembling clips from various photographers into one cohesive film.

Release Date1973-10-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count12

Zoo Piece

As the perspective shifts from display to imprisonment, a montage of images from a zoo takes on increasing significance and pathos.

Release Date1990-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count6

Blue Helmet

A young man, who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a few months during the war, recounts his experiences. Throughout the film, we only see his face filmed in close-up, along with a few photos. The interview acts as a strong testimony to the failure of the international community in the Yugoslav crisis.

Release Date1995-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count7

Guillaume Movie

Cat film by Chris Marker

Release Date2008-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Train Rolls On

This half-hour documentary focuses on Medvedkin and his CineTrain of the 1930s, a sort of mobile film workshop, complete with post-production facilities, animation stations and a large laboratory. Traveling thousands of miles across the Russian countryside, the train stopped to have its filmmakers document Ukranian harvest practices, steel production facilities in southern Russia and other industrial / agricultural matters; With each crew member living in 1 square meter living quarters, all individuals on the train were responsible for various odd-jobs and other practical matters in addition to their own film-making concerns.

Release Date1973-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count7

From a Distant Gaze

Jean Ravel's A Distant Gaze (D'un lointain regard) is a 12-minute observance of people on the streets backed by Michel Legrand music.

Release Date1964-09-14

DepartmentCamera

JobDirector of Photography

Imagine

An historical "if"

Release Date2011-08-24

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Three Haiku Videos

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. The third haiku is a tribute to the Lumière brothers. In an homage to their style, Marker documents an event of daily life in only a minute, choosing to film work on the Petite Centure (a Parisian railway) in May 1994. Due to the work, no train actually passes and we are simply shown desolate train tracks, making the haiku a dry parody of 'L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat'.

Release Date1994-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2

An Owl Is an Owl Is an Owl

From Chris Marker's collection Bestiaire aka Petit Bestiaire (1990), consisting of three video haikus.

Release Date1990-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count14

ROYAL POLKA.mov

What else ?

Release Date2011-05-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

A Mayor in Kosovo

This is where sizzling fire still smoldering in a war which everybody talked a lot and which we rarely had the opportunity to hear the actors. Once removed their image of poor refugees on the roads, the Kosovars have strangely disappeared from the media world and Kosovo is again an abstraction. Bajram Rexhepi is entirely concrete. Surgeon by profession, he's a surgeon that fought the war in the ranks of the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. With the upcoming of peace, his unquestioned authority made him the elected mayor of Mitrovica. The use made of this authority may undermine some misconceptions.

Release Date2000-07-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Leila Attacks

Chris Marker's cat and rat.

Release Date2007-02-09

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count8

Tempo Risoluto

Rhytmics of a revolution.

Release Date2011-02-14

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Slon Tango

An oddly rhythmic and balletic tape emerges from the juxtaposition of an elephant lumbering around his enclosure at the zoo and elegant music by Stravinsky.

Release Date1993-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

Congo Oyé (We Have Come Back)

An absolute unknown work among Marker’s collaborations, made by filmmakers Bill Stephens, Paul and Carole Roussopoulas with Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, Congo Oyé was never completed and long-believed lost by all involved.

Release Date1971-06-01

DepartmentEditing

JobEditor

Report on Brazil: Torture

On September the 4th, 1969, a group of Brazilian revolutionaries kidnap the U.S. ambassador. In exchange for his release, they demand that the Brazilian authorities publish a manifesto they provide, and release 15 political prisoners.

Release Date1969-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Overnight

Short film about violence in London.

Release Date2011-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Henchman Glance

Excerpts from Alain Resnais' film NIGHT AND FOG served as evidence during the trial against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. On the evening before the trial, the defendant Eichmann was shown the entire film. Leo Hurwitz, the director responsible for video recording the trial, filmed this unusual projection in a kind of shot-countershot procedure without sound and in black and white. Nearly fifty years later, French filmmaker Chris Marker, who had already worked as an assistant director on NIGHT AND FOG, assembled these shots with the original color images and sounds of the French film: Henchman Glance.

Release Date2008-09-11

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

You Speak of Chile: What Allende Said

Salvador Allende interviewed by Régis Debray in 1971.

Release Date1973-10-20

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

Petite Ceinture

A cinematic haiku by Chris Marker.

Release Date1994-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count2

Berlin 1990

Berlin 1990 travels the streets and the political landscape of the recently re-unified Berlin. In the tumultuous atmosphere of 1990, we watch Berliners walk through check points manned by soldiers, past street vendors selling sausages and "actual" pieces of the Berlin Wall, and watch as they watch the election results come in for another "new" Germany.

Release Date1990-07-03

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Jour de tournage

Release Date1969-05-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

The End of the World Seen by the Angel Gabriel

This film is considered lost. Chris Marker described it as his first film, shot in Berlin on an 8mm movie camera purportedly borrowed from André Bazin. A decade and a half later, Marker would recycle some of Berlin photographs in a montage sequence in La Jetée evoking a post–­World War III Paris. In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel is an archangel with power to announce God’s will to men. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran. It is Gabriel who announces to the Virgin Mary that she would have a child. Alain Resnais recalled: “It was a sequence of images that weren’t always identifiable, he used a lot of out of focus shots and techniques like that, but the commentary was fabulous and I was completely swept away by this film”.

Release Date1947-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

You Speak of Paris: Maspero. Words Have Meaning

An affectionate portrait of the left-wing publisher and bookshop owner François Maspero, who was a contributor to Far From Vietnam and would later publish the commentary to Le Fond de l’air est rouge. Maspero is one of the most satisfying and likeable of Marker’s films from this period, achieving an exemplary balance of quirky human warmth with a clear and inventive form of political argument.

Release Date1971-06-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count5

The Spiral

Documentary on the events provoked by the systematic attack of imperialism on the Popular Unity government in Chile, presided by Salvador Allende.

Release Date1976-04-27

DepartmentEditing

JobEditor

Vote Count4

Owl Gets in Your Eyes

A cinematic haiku by Chris Marker.

Release Date1994-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count4

From Chris to Christo

In the fall of 1985, Christo "packed" the Pont Neuf. In the space of a week, enthusiasts, critics and curious people drastically change the perception of this place whose presence has never been felt as much as since it was veiled. And that's what Christo wanted.

Release Date1985-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Pictures at an Exhibition

Pictures, collages, well, call'em XPLUGS

Release Date2008-08-26

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Eclipse

During the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999, Chris Marker documents the French public looking up to the skies, with many of them wearing eclipse glasses.

Release Date1999-09-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count11

Zapping Zone

Chris Marker’s work, "Zapping Zone (Proposals for an imaginary television)" was produced by the Mnam-Centre Pompidou in the framework of the exhibition "Passages de l’Image" in 1990. Composed of 13 television sets, 7 computer stations (Apple II GS), 4 luminous displays containing 80 slides and 10 photomontages, this large interactive installation marked the entry of digital script into the art field at the dawn of the World Wide Web. Up until 2007, and Chris Marker’s last presentation before his death, the artist produced endlessly, building up an archive of 183 disks of work.

Release Date1990-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

The Morning After

After a sleepless night, Obama's victory flashes on frontpages around the world.

Release Date2008-11-12

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Tchaïka

A still, highly overexposed shot of a car bridge and the river below. A cinematic haiku by Chris Marker.

Release Date1994-01-01

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count8