Chris Marker

An affiliate of the French New Wave, Chris Marker revolutionized cinema and the documentary genre with his innovation of the essay film. Known for cinematic hallmarks such as La Jetée (1962) and Sans Soleil (1983), Marker transcended the boundaries of cinema, producing CD-ROMs, photographs, and installations in addition to films. His oeuvre, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, was imbricated in the postwar climate and the politics of the Parisian left. He often explored issues surrounding memory: “At once unsentimentally au courant and fixated on that past, Marker was the Janus of world cinema. His unclassifiable documentaries treat memory as the stuff of science fiction,” film critic J. Hoberman wrote. In subsequent decades, Marker fixated on the failed political hopes of the 20th century. His work influenced peers, including Jean-Luc Godard, and later artists, such as The Otolith Group.