Chris Marker studied philosophy under Jean-Paul Sartre. In World War 2 he joined the Résistance. After the war he began to write and make films. He traveled to many socialist countries and documented what he saw in films and books.
He became internationally known for the short film La Jetée. It tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel by using a series of filmed photographs developed as a photo-montage of varying pace with limited narration and only a single brief moving image.
In 1982 he finished Sans Soleil, stretching the limits of what could be called a documentary. It is an essay, a montage, mixing pieces of documentary with fiction and philosophical comments, creating an athmosphere of dream and science fiction (again). The main themes are Japan, (the erasing of) memory and travel.
Beginning with Sans Soleil he developed a deep interest in digital technology, which led to his film Level 5 (1996) and IMMEMORY (1998), an interactive multimedia CD-ROM, produced for the Centre Pompidou.
As a filmmaker, Chris Marker sees himself related to Andrei Tarkovsky and Akira Kurosawa, both of whom he has portrayed in films. Chris Marker lives in Paris and does not grant interviews.