Chris Marker 1921-2012

Richard Brody on the distinctive French writer, artist and filmmaker

Chris Marker

From The New Yorker (link via 3 Quarks Daily): 'The very subject of Chris Marker’s work is memory; his death today, at the age of ninety-one (indeed, the day after his ninety-first birthday), elicits a simulacrum of memory, in tributes such as this one, where the contrast between the immediate significance (to the protagonist in the drama and to those who know and love him) and its public reflection is stretched to absurdity. For Marker, memory isn’t passive; it’s an act of resistance—the edge that cuts a path into the future—and the effective work of memory is the very definition of art. Marker was a master of film editing—the part of the filmmaking process that Jean-Luc Godard, another master editor and memory-artist, defined as holding past, present, and future in one’s own hands—and the very possibility of remembering Marker demands a little editing, a splicing-in of excerpts from a surprising and crucial document.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Chris Marker Documentary
• Stills from Chris Marker's La jetée
• Echo Chamber: Listening to La Jetée