Editing Chris Marker (section)

==''La Jetée'' and ''Le Joli Mai'' (1962–1966)==

Marker became known internationally for the short film ''[[La Jetée]]'' (''The Pier'') in 1962.<ref>https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/critics-picks-la-jetee/ Critics' Picks: 'La Jetee' - The New York Times</ref> It tells of a [[post-apocalyptic science fiction|post-nuclear war]] experiment in [[time travel]] by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a [[photomontage]] of varying pace, with limited narration and sound effects. In the film, a survivor of a futuristic third World War is obsessed with distant and disconnected memories of a pier at the [[Orly Airport]], the image of a mysterious woman, and a man's death. Scientists experimenting in time travel choose him for their studies, and the man travels back in time to contact the mysterious woman, and discovers that the man's death at the Orly Airport was his own. Except for one shot of the woman mentioned above sleeping and suddenly waking up, the film is composed entirely of photographs by Jean Chiabaud and stars Davos Hanich as the man, [[Hélène Châtelain]] as the woman and photographer-film director [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]] as a man from the future.

While making ''La Jetée'', Marker was simultaneously making the 150-minute documentary essay-film ''[[Le joli mai]]'', released in 1963. Beginning in the spring of 1962, Marker and his camera operator Pierre Lhomme shot 55 hours of footage interviewing random people on the streets of Paris. The questions, asked by the unseen Marker, range from their personal lives, as well as social and political issues of relevance at that time. As he had with montages of landscapes and indigenous art, Marker created a film essay that contrasted and juxtaposed a variety of lives with his signature commentary (spoken by Marker's friends, singer-actor [[Yves Montand]] in the French version and [[Simone Signoret]] in the English version). The film has been compared to the ''[[Cinéma vérité]]'' films of [[Jean Rouch]], and criticized by its practitioners at the time.<ref name="Wakeman" /> The term "Cinéma vérité" was itself anathema to Marker, who never used it. Instead, he preferred his own term "ciné, ma vérité," meaning "cinéma, my truth."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Lim|first=Dennis|date=2012-07-31|title=Chris Marker, Pioneer of the Essay Film, Dies at 91|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/movies/chris-marker-enigmatic-multimedia-artist-dies-at-91.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/movies/chris-marker-enigmatic-multimedia-artist-dies-at-91.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited|access-date=2021-05-03|issn=0362-4331}}{{cbignore}}</ref> It was shown in competition at the 1963 [[Venice Film Festival]], where it won the award for Best First Work. It also won the Golden Dove Award at the Leipzig DOK Festival.

After the documentary ''Le Mystère Koumiko'' in 1965, Marker made ''Si j'avais quatre dromadaires'', an essay-film that, like ''La Jetée'', is a [[photomontage]] of over 800 photographs Marker had taken over the previous 10 years in 26 countries. The commentary involves a conversation between a fictitious photographer and two friends, who discuss the photos. The film's title is an allusion to a poem by [[Guillaume Apollinaire]]. It was the last film in which Marker included "travel footage" for many years.<ref name="Wakeman" />