Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat

The work of visionary French filmmaker Chris Marker (1921-2012) laces realism with science fiction and lyricism with politics. His influence extends across art, experimental film and mainstream cinema. He is often given credit for renewing cinema, not least for his innovations in the genre of the ‘essay-film’, a hybrid of documentary and personal reflection, of which he became an acknowledged master. Hybridity and a restless crossing between many different artistic forms and media were characteristic of Marker’s work, which is poetic and humorous, analytical, political and philosophical – reflecting the complexity of the world.

This book shows him as a multifaceted artist and intellectual, working as an editor, writer, filmmaker, photographer and a pioneer of new media and installation art. It also includes the first English publication of key essays by Marker scholars Raymond Bellour and Arnaud Lambert, as well as two early texts by Marker himself, translated into English here for the first time.