Chris Marker aka Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve

A great filmmaker, in a category by himself -- via the Guardian. In my opinion, one of the great directors of the 20th century.

He fought in the Resistance during World War II; he became a journalist and photographer. He fell in with the Left Bank Film Movement. He was the assistant director on Resnais' "Night and Fog."

Then he began making his own films. They are classified as documentaries, but defy definition, being meditations on themes, profound essays that open out to resonances that reverberate long after the movie is over. My two favorites are "La Jetee," which inspired Gilliam's "12 Monkeys," and "Sans Soleil."





A radical assembly of techniques -- filmed photographs, eruptions of fantasy, narrated commentary, quotation -- illustrate a seemingly random sequence of thoughts that ends up making constellations of connections out of widely disparate objects and events.

Notably, Marker worked with no budget whatsoever. For instance, for "Sans Soleil" he shot silent footage and laid in a soundtrack via an old audio cassette recorder. Making a virtue of poverty, he worked with what was at hand and turned out a remarkable series of absolutely unique and beautiful creations.