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CHRIS MARKER FILM AND VIDEO COLLABORATIONS




  COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY SAM DIIORIO

  a Film Comment online exclusive


Night and Fog / Nuit et Brouillard (Alain Resnais, 1955, 32m)
Marker is listed as one of three assistant directors involved in this landmark essay film about Nazi concentration camps. In a 1995 interview Resnais states that the final version of the commentary was a collaboration between Marker and Jean Cayrol.

Toute la mémoire du monde (Alain Resnais, 1956, 22m)
A documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale, France's national library. In the credits, "Chris and Magic" Marker are listed as collaborators.

Les Hommes de la baleine (Mario Ruspoli, 1956, 26m)
Under the pseudonym "Jacopo Berenizi" Marker wrote the commentary for this short about whale hunters in the Azores. The two would return to this topic in 1972's Vive la Baleine.

Broadway by Light (William Klein, 1957, 10m)
Klein's first film is an illustration and defense of the Times Square movie marquee. In the credits, Marker is listed as the author of the film's subtitles· but there aren't any. According to Anatole Dauman's memoir Souvenir-Écran, however, he wrote the short text which appears onscreen at the very beginning.

Le Mystère de l'atelier quinze (Alain Resnais/André Heinrich, 1957, 18m)
Marker wrote the commentary for this fictional short, a PSA promoting safety in the workplace, which centers on a doctor trying to discover the cause of a factory worker's sudden illness.

Des Hommes dans le ciel (Jean-Jacques Languepin/A.Suire, 1958. Commentary: Marker)
No information available about this film. Languepin made a number of documentaries about explorers, mountain climbers, and athletes during the Fifties and Sixties.

Le Siècle a soif (Raymond Vogel, 1958. Commentary: Marker)
A short film about fruit juice with commentary in Alexandrine verse.

La Mer et les jours (Raymond Vogel/Alain Kaminker, 1958, 22m. Commentary: Marker)
A somber work about the daily lives of fishermen on Brittany's Île de Sein.

Les Astronautes (Walerian Borowczyk, 1959, 14m)
Although Marker's name appears in the credits, the extent of his participation in this animated short about an amateur space traveler (and his pet owl Anabase) is unknown.

Django Reinhardt (Paul Paviot, 1959, 22m. Commentary: Marker)
A biographical short recounting Reinhardt's career, placing special emphasis on his Manouche roots.

L'Amérique Insolite (François Reichenbach, 1960, 86m)
An affectionate catalogue of the tics and foibles of America in the late Fifties. While it incorporates generous portions of the commentary Marker eventually published as "L'Amérique Rêve" in Commentaires I, it does not give him a writing credit.

Jouer à Paris (Catherine Varlin, 1962, 27m)
Edited by Marker, this film is a 27-minute postscript to Le Joli Mai assembled from leftover footage and organized around a new commentary.

·à Valparaiso (Joris Ivens, 1963, 29m. Commentary: Marker)
Ivens and Marker's draught a poetic map of one of Chile's major port cities. Text and images gracefully link geography with psychology, music with history, and class analysis with penguins, as if nothing could be more natural.

Les Chemins de la fortune (Pierre Kassovitz, 1964, 42m)
Marker helped Kassovitz finish this clever and insightful travelogue about Venezuela, which in Markerian geography appears to be located halfway between Siberia and Valparaiso·

La Douceur du village (François Reichenbach, 1964, 47m)
Reichenbach's beautiful color short, edited by Marker, reproduces the rhythms of rural France. Life in the small town of Loué is broken down into its component parts-notably love, death, war, morals, spelling, orchestra rehearsals, and a hymn to the cow.

La Brûlure de mille soleils (Pierre Kast, 1964, 25m)
Marker edited this (mostly) animated science-fiction short and (possibly) collaborated on the script. A depressive millionaire-poet, accompanied by his cat Marcel and a robot semantician, travels in time to shake a persistent feeling of ennui and falls hopelessly in love with a woman from another planet.

Le Volcan interdit (Haroun Tazieff, 1965, 55m. Commentary: Marker)
Tazieff was one of the world's foremost volcanologists. The film depicts a series of active volcanoes and documents an expedition to the bottom of Mount Nyiragongo in the former Congo.

Europort-Rotterdam (Joris Ivens, 1966, 20m)
Marker is credited with adapting Dutch poet and novelist Gerrit Kouwenaar's text, itself a reworking of the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Condemned to eternal wandering, the latter is permitted to visit Rotterdam once every century. When he returns this time, he sees the city with fresh eyes, and in turn inspires others to question their assumptions about urban space.

Ciné-Tracts (1968)
When student revolts and rampant strikes exploded in May '68, Marker contacted a number of people (including Jean-Luc Godard, Philippe Garrel, Jackie Raynal, and Alain Resnais) to make two to three minute 16mm silent films encouraging political resistance. The resulting Ciné-Tracts were meant to be screened at meetings and demonstrations. Marker supposedly made several of them, notably number 5, Mouvement étudiant débouchant sur mouvement ouvrier (ou C'était la nuit·), but since the films are anonymous, specifics remain sketchy.

Classe de Lutte (Besançon Medvedkin Group, 1969, 37m)
One of the finest examples of the politically engaged French documentary cinema of the late Sixties. The film centers on Suzanne Zéda, a young factory worker and militant activist in the CGT trade union. Marker might have served as consultant but sources differ as to his exact role.

On vous parle de Flins (Guy Devart, 1969/70, 30m)
Number seven in SLON's On vous parle· series. Marker helped film and edit this short, which deals with how the exploitation of immigrant workers at a Renault factory in Flins was abetted by the mayor's office in nearby Meulan.
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