“I wonder how people used to remember when they didn’t take pictures.” Take a look at the Marker-inspired Robert Kramer film, Point de départ, from 1993. “One day or other all these films that I’m making will make up a single long film, a story that is always developing.”Robert Kramer Starting Place | Point de DépartDirected by Robert KramerFrance 1993, 35mm, color, 83 min.English, French, and Vietnamese with English subtitlesIn...
CHRIS MARKER, NEVER EXPLAIN, NEVER COMPLAIN UN FILM DOCUMENTAIRE DE JEAN-MARIE BARBE ET ARNAUD LAMBERT :: The French film about Chris Marker, realized in 2016, has been released on DVD (docnet.fr), in docnet films’ “Collection Lumière de Notre Temps” series. It will be shown, among other venues, at the Cinémathèque française during their comprehensive exhibtion–retrospective Chris Marker: Les 7 vies d’un cinéaste, opening in May. The auteurs will present the film...
One of the films that always seemed to escape the great anthologies that we do have, in French and in English, was always Si j’avais quatre dromedaires (1966). The film is summarized as “a succession of 800 still images taken in 26 countries between 1955 and 1965, from Tokyo to Havanna, in passing through Peking, Moscow, Stockholm, Rome and Paris… commented by Chris Marker and his friends in voice-off.” [« Une succession de 800 images fixes prises dans 26 pays...
Exciting news from the Cinémathèque française announcing dates for the much-anticipated Chris Marker exhibition has been posted on www.cinematheque.fr. Here’s the intro and several citations for now. English translations have been added at the end of the post. For background on the acquisition of Marker’s estate, see State of the Estate and State of the Estate II: The Glorious Shambles, as well as Fonds Chris Marker – 550 Grands Cartons chez...
CinémAction – Chris Marker: pionnier et novateur Thanks to Chris Darke for alerting us to this new publication with some familiar names contributing articles to CinémAction 165: Chris Marker: pionnier et novateure. L’interactivité filmique, initiée de manière radicale dès 1950, permet d’appréhender une démarche polyphonique qui n’a cessé de montrer et commenter l’histoire du XXe siècle. Ciné-voyageur, Chris Marker reste, de fait...
Le Coeur Net by Chris Marker Thanks to John H. for the gift of this PDF scan of the French original of Marker’s early novel Le Coeur net, published in 1950 when Marker was 29 or so. We append to it the English translation from the following year. Chris Marker, Le Coeur Net, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1950. Préface de Jean Cayrol. Chris Marker, The Forthright Spirit, trans. Robert Kee and Terence Kilmartin, London: Allan Wingate, 1951. Here’s how it...
Wooden Cross & Iron Path Translation © Sophie Kovel, 2017Original: “Croix de bois et chemin de fer,” Esprit, (Jan. 1951), 88-90. Please note that this is a partial translation; the text continues beyond where we left off here, with Marker’s conversation with the German soldier focusing in on the concentration camps. There are also 5 footnotes. We will be updating this page with the full translation asap. At Ploen (Schles-wig-Holstein) I ride...
It was a strange thing. A small box of metal with irregularly rounded corners, with a rectangular opening in the middle and in front of it a tiny lens, the size of a euro. We had to slip a piece of film – real film, with perforations – that was pressed by a rubber wheel, and by turning a button connected to the roulette, the film was unrolled one by one. Actually, each image represented a different scene, so that it seemed more like a...
My sincere thanks to all who contributed recently to the site. Practically, it helped a ton. Emotionally, it helped profoundly. Thank you. Merci.
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L’essai proposé ici se prend au jeu de la compagnie des images. Il propose l’invention d’un aller-retour sur Chris Marker. Nous sommes à bord d’un train : les images défilent au rythme de la machine ; elles évoquent d’autres images, des pensées et des souvenirs. Disons, par utopisme, que l’on dispose à volonté de toutes les images de Marker et de leurs commentaires – chose apparemment utopique tant le cinéaste lui-même a contribué à la difficulté de les rassembler...
There is a new film out entitled Chris Marker, Never Explain, Never Complain, by Jean-Marie Barbe & Arnaud Lambert. The film is to be shown as part of the 2017 DOXA Festival called “French, French” taking place 4-14 Mai 2017 at the Cinémathèque in Vancouver, BC, and will move to theh Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley after that (not sure of dates yet). For the news and the PDF of the DOXA press booklet I am grateful to Christine van Assche. The...
Letter from Chris Marker to Paul Chan Direct link to YouTube video: www.youtube.com In October of 2010, I emailed Chris to ask him if he was interested in taking part in a special issue of eflux journal that the art critic Sven Lütticken and I were editing. The issue focused on whether contemporary art had or had not addressed the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the US and elsewhere, and how these largely nationalistic, homophobic and xenophobic movements...