TSPDT - Chris Marker


	"Marker is the foreign correspondent and inquiring reporter. He is especially interested in transitional societies, in "Life in the process of becoming history," as he has put it. His films are not only set in specific places, they are about the cultures of those places. Though he has tended to work in socialist countries more than most Western filmmakers, he is also fascinated by Japan. Concerned with leftist issues, he remains a member of the intellectual Left, politically committed but not doctrinaire. "Involved objectivity" is his own phrase for his approach." - Jack C. Ellis and Guo-Juin Hong (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)

	"Arguably the cinema's greatest essayist, he transcends traditional documentary with his exhilaratingly personal reports on the world, discursive filmed letters which - even in Le Joli Mai, a comparatively straightforward cinéma verité account of Parisians in 1962 - adopt the quizzical perspective of a stranger in a strange land." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

	"Jean Queval once called Marker "our unknown cosmonaut." It was a striking idea that, while Americans trod the ashy moon in cumbersome suits, so Marker with camera over his shoulder - like Dziga Vertov's hero - had proved himself a more penetrating traveler...His films see nothing exceptional in an inquisitive traveler sending back films about the lands he has seen and the thoughts he has had while there." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)