Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La Jetée, A Grin Without a Cat and Sans Soleil. He is known for challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and even himself for years with his complex ideas about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet.
Marker’s La Jetée is considered one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, due to its use of the language of cinema to construct its narrative effect. The short film is composed of still images showing photographs of Paris from all angles and viewpoints. This includes underground caverns of future Paris, to the intensely detailed views across the ruined city, and the juxtaposition of destroyed buildings with the spire of the Eiffel Tower.
His film La Jetée (1962) is described as ‘A look at the past, present, future and the after effects of the World War III, tracing the life of a man, a slave who travels in time to find a solution to the world’s destiny’ and is a French science fiction associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from monochrome still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.
Link to short film: