The early film writings of Chris Marker

University of Minnesota Press

For Chris Marker, writing came before filmmaking. A decade after Marker’s death, critics continue to rediscover his remarkable oeuvre, which comprised writing, photography, film, video, radio, and digital media. Associated with the Left Bank subset of the French New Wave, Marker is perhaps best recognized for directing La Jetée (1962). To celebrate the publication of the first English translation of Marker’s early writings (published between 1948 and 1955), Steven Ungar, the editor of Chris Marker: Early Film Writings, with translator Sally Shafto, have joined Jean-Michel Frodo and Sam Di Iorio in conversation.

“The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker.”
—film theorist Roy Armes

Chris Marker (born Christian Hippolyte François Georges Bouche-Villeneuve, 1921–2012) was a French writer, artist, and director. His time-travel film La Jetée (1962) is one of the most celebrated shorts ever made. A true polymath, his later creations ranged from videos and the interactive CD-ROM Immemory to the multimedia digital platform Second Life.

Steven Ungar is professor emeritus of cinematic arts, French, and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is author of several books including Critical Mass: Social Documentary in France from the Silent Era to the New Wave.

Sally Shafto is a French film scholar and translator and assistant professor of English at Framingham State University. She is author of The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May 1968, and her translations include Jean-Marie Staub and Danièle Huillet’s Writings. She teaches at Framingham State University.

Jean-Michel Frodon is a journalist and one of the most influential film critics and film historians in the world. He is author or contributor of several books including The World of Jia Zhangke and Le Cinéma Français de la Nouvelle Vague a Nos Jours, and wrote the foreword to “Night and Fog”: A Film in History by Sylvie Lindeperg. Frodon blogs at Projection Publique.

Sam Di Iorio is Associate Professor of French at Hunter College and Deputy Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in French at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has written about postwar films and filmmakers, political theory, and cultural history for Screen, Trafic, Film Comment and the Criterion Collection. His essay “Comolli’s Detours: Free Jazz, Film Theory, Cinéma Direct” is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press.

EPISODE REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING:

-André Bazin

-Robert Cannon’s Gerald McBoing-Boing

-Alain Resnais

-Agnès Varda

-Jean Rouch

-René Leibowitz

-Joseph Rovan (born Joseph Adolph Rosenthal)

-Nicole Védrès

-Eternal Current Events (translated by Jackson B. Smith)

-Le Dépays / Chris Marker

-Camera Obscura piece by Ivan Cerecina translating Nicole Védrès’s “Les feuilles bougent” (“The Leaves Are Stirring”) and an accompanying essay

-Republic of Images / Alan Williams

-Le Cinéma Français de la Nouvelle Vague a Nos Jours / Jean-Michel Frodon

-The Fragile Present: Statues Also Die with Night and Fog by Sam Di Iorio; article in South Central Review.

-Trafic N°105 (Printemps 2018), with article by Sam Di Iorio

MORE CHRIS MARKER:

chrismarker.ch

Gorgomancy.net

The Criterion Channel

Chris Marker: Early Film Writings is available from University of Minnesota Press.

"One of the pleasures of Chris Marker’s films is the singular literary voice of his inimitable commentaries, in all its wit and quicksilver intelligence. That voice is present here, being honed through contact with others’ images and before Marker moved from the page to the screen himself. This groundbreaking collection introduces aficionados old and new to work likely unknown to them and allows us all to discover another dimension of this prodigious artist: Marker the film critic."
—Chris Darke, author of La Jetée (BFI Film Classics)