If there ever was a “motionographer”, an artist who used film and pen with equal eloquence, it was filmmaker Chris Marker who died today on his 91st birthday. His name does not resonate with everyone because Marker was a recluse, refusing to be photographed and seldom accepting interviews and yet, he collaborated with the greatest film directors of our time, most notably Alain Resnais. Terry Gilliam brought Marker back to the attention of many with Twelve Monkeys, a film he based on Marker’s iconic La Jetée.
His films were always intensely personal and poetic, challenging the very notion of narrative, of documentary, and of memory. Marker used cartoons, graffiti, text, photographs, voice-over, and various means of image processing in much of his work, animating and ‘writing’ images with a profound sense of poetry. He will be missed.