Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, also known as Chris Marker (France: 29 July 1921 - 29 July 2012) was a French writer, poet, activist, internaut, critic, photographer, traveler, journalist, film enssayist, multimedia artist and documentary maker.

He began his work as part of the French Rive gauche group, parallel but different from the nouvelle vague, with which he would later share themes and works. He is credited with creating the subjective documentary and is considered a pioneer of collective cinema in France. His cinematographic work is known for its poetic, sometimes ethereal, and video-art-like expression. He dedicated himself, during sixty years of work, to observing, with meticulous curiosity, with caustic and often amusing irony, even with anger, the vicissitudes of world history and also of the individual (memory, art, wars, politics, culture, nature, etc), all this while experimenting with various methods of image manipulation and montage.

He is also known for the ignorance of his person. For years, hardly anyone knew what Chris Marker looked like, he didn't like being photographed, so there were no photos of him. It amused him to offer contradictory accounts of his life in the few written interviews he gave. The closest you can get to Marker's intimate life is in his film career. Philippe Dubois once said: "Chris Marker is, in a way, the most celebrated of the unknown filmmakers". "Rather than a Man Without Qualities, he is a Man Without Biography," says his official website: chrismarker.org.

He used many pseudonyms too, some are Hayao Yamaneko, Jacopo Berenzini, Kosinki, Michel Krasna, Sandor Krasna, Guillaume-en-Égypte (his avatar) & the best known Chris Marker.

Some of his most important works are La Jetée (1962), Sans Soleil (1983), Far From Vietnam (1967), A Grin Without a Cat (1977), Level Five (1997), A.K. (1985) & One Day In the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch (1999). He also dabbled in CD-ROMs with Immemory (1997), has a website called Gorgomancy, a Youtube channel called Kosinki & created a whole world dedicated to his interests, life and works, called 'Ouvroir', in the virtual world game: Second Life.

Christian Bouche-Villeneuve, dit Chris Marker (parfois écrit Chris. Marker), est un réalisateur, écrivain, illustrateur, traducteur, photographe, éditeur, philosophe, essayiste, critique, poète et producteur français, né le 29 juillet 1921 à Neuilly-sur-Seine et mort le 29 juillet 2012 à Paris. Pour le public, son œuvre renvoie à ses films majeurs: La Jetée, Sans soleil, Le Joli Mai, Le fond de l'air est rouge et Chats perchés. Pour l’essentiel, ce sont des documentaires, définis dès le départ, selon André Bazin, comme des essais cinématographiques.

Cependant, son œuvre d'ensemble ne se limite pas aux films qu'il a signés. En effet le réalisateur français collabore activement avec d’autres réalisateurs, écrivains, acteurs, artistes ou simples ouvriers: Costa-Gavras, Yves Montand, Alain Resnais, Paul Paviot, Yannick Bellon, Alexandre Medvedkine, Jorge Semprun, Benigno Cacérès, Thoma Vuille, Mario Ruspoli, Joris Ivens, Haroun Tazieff, William Klein, Mario Marret, Akira Kurosawa, Patricio Guzman. Il soutient également les jeunes, notamment le collectif Kourtrajmé et Isild Le Besco, en qui il voit «une nouvelle nouvelle vague».

Tout au long de sa carrière, Chris Marker s’est attaché à observer les vicissitudes de l’histoire mondiale tout autant qu’individuelle, avec curiosité et discernement, avec poésie et émerveillement, avec ironie et souvent un regard amusé, parfois avec colère. Au centre de sa réflexion figurent la mémoire, le souvenir, la nostalgie du temps passé réinventé mais à jamais disparu. ...

Source: Article "Chris Marker" de Wikipédia en français, soumis à la licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.