Chris Marker: Memories of the Future

by Catherine Lupton

Chris Marker is one of the most extraordinary and influential film-makers of our time. In landmark films such as "Letter from Siberia" (1958), "La Jetee" (1962), "Sans Soleil" (1982) and "Level Five" (1996), he overturned the conventions of the cinema, confounding normal distinctions between documentary and fiction, private and public concerns, writing and visual recording, and the still and moving image. Yet these works are only the better-known elements of a protean career that to date has spanned the second half of the twentieth century and encompassed writing, photography, film-making, video, television and the expanding field of digital multimedia. Catherine Lupton traces the development and transformation of Marker's work from the late 1940s, when he began to work as a poet, novelist and critic for the French journal "Esprit", through to the 1990s, and the release of his most recent works: the feature film "Level Five" and the CD ROM "Immemory". She incorporates the historical events, shifts and cultural contexts that most productively illuminate the different phases of Marker's career. He stands out as a singular figure whose work resists easy assimilation into the mainstream of cultural and cinematic trends. Marker's oeuvre moves in circles, with each project recycling and referring back to earlier works and to a host of other adopted texts, and proceeds by way of oblique association and lateral digression. This circular movement is ideally suited to capturing and mapping Marker's abiding and consummate obsession: the forms and operations of human memory. "Chris Marker: Memories of the Future" itself aims to capture something of this movement, in forming a comprehensive analysis and overview of this modern master's prolific and multi-faceted career.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Art, Biography

232 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by Catherine Lupton is a survey of the work of French cinematographer and video artist Chris Marker from the long-lived auteur’s first efforts in the 1940s to all the way to 2005. It is important to emphasize that Lupton examines only Marker’s work, not his life. Chris Marker was an infamously private person, so private in fact that only a handful of photographs of him exist, let alone much in the way of biographical facts.

Cinephiles will, however, get a lot out of this book. While Marker’s films La jetée and Sans soleil have been widely available, especially thanks to the Criterion Collection, the rest of his output is lesser known. Lupton describes these works and as much of their background as possible (the forces with which Marker collaborated to make them, who funded them, etc.). Thanks to Lupton, I now understand who those stars of La jetée, who were not established actors, are. We get some idea of how Marker’s political philosophy evolved over time, from his early films sympathetic to French Communism to later creations that show a more nuanced, humanistic awareness of the flaws of the Soviet Union. The book is lavishly illustrated with stills.

Marker lived on for another seven years after Lupton published this book, and he remained productive, so an updated edition would be nice.

[Claude Bertout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Marker is a secretive and influential film maker and writer who's played an active role on the French intellectual scene since the late 1940s. This book is one of the few ressources on Marker's works that presents a well-documented analysis of his oeuvre in a somewhat more detailed way than Nora Alter's volume on the same topic. These two studies nicely complement each other and are required reading for any Marker aficionado.

[mao · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the only book devoted to the work of Magic Marker in English worth looking at. Due to the difficulty in seeing his work, this book makes a nice accompaniment to the thought of a master.

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impeccably written and immaculately researched biography about the life and work of the 20th century's enigmatic "cosmonaut of memory", that prefigurative 21st century man, Chris Marker. This is absolutely the best English-language study about him and his art that I have read and it has been genuinely indispensable to my research.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I watched 20+ Chris Marker films and used this book as an essential guide to help understand and connect the dots between them all. Probably if I'd just seen Sans Soleil then tried to read this straight through, I would've put it down... not so fascinating in itself, but along with the films it's great. I got excited towards the end and read ahead, so still got a few films to catch up with.