Editing Chris Marker (section)

==Early career (1950–1961)==

During his early journalism career, Marker became increasingly interested in filmmaking and in the early 1950s experimented with photography. Around this time Marker met and befriended many members of the [[Left Bank Cinema|Left Bank Film Movement]], including [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], [[Henri Colpi]], [[Armand Gatti]], and the novelists [[Marguerite Duras]] and [[Jean Cayrol]]. This group is often associated with the [[French New Wave]] directors who came to prominence during the same time period, and the groups were often friends and journalistic co-workers. The term ''Left Bank'' was first coined by film critic [[Richard Roud]],<ref name=hfa>{{cite web|title=The Left Bank Revisited: Marker, Resnais, Varda|work=Harvard Film Archive|url=http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2000mayjun/leftbank.html|access-date=16 August 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907190306/http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2000mayjun/leftbank.html|archive-date=7 September 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> who described them as having "fondness for a kind of [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]] life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the [[plastic arts]], and a consequent interest in [[experimental film]]making", as well as an identification with the political [[left wing|left]].<ref name=hfa/> [[Anatole Dauman]] produced many of Marker's earliest films.

In 1952 Marker made his first film, ''[[Olympia 52]]'', a 16mm feature documentary about the [[1952 Summer Olympics|1952 Helsinki Olympic Games]]. In 1953 he collaborated with Resnais on the documentary ''[[Statues Also Die]]''. The film examines traditional [[African art]] such as sculptures and masks, and its decline with the coming of Western colonialism. It won the 1954 [[Prix Jean Vigo]], but was banned by French censors for its criticism of French colonialism.<ref name="Wakeman" />

After working as assistant director on Resnais's ''[[Night and Fog (1955 film)|Night and Fog]]'' in 1955, Marker made ''Sunday in Peking'', a short documentary "[[Essay#Film|film essay]]" in the style that characterized Marker's output for most of his career. Marker shot the film in two weeks while traveling through China with Armand Gatti in September 1955. In the film, Marker's commentary overlaps scenes from China, such as tombs that, contrary to Westernized understandings of Chinese legends, do not contain the remains of [[Ming dynasty]] emperors.<ref name="Wakeman" />

After working on the commentary for Resnais's film ''Le mystère de l'atelier quinze'' in 1957, Marker continued to refine his style with the feature documentary ''Letter from Siberia''.<ref>https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/soundtrack-mix-26-inmemory-a-letter-to-chris-marker Soundtrack Mix #26: Inmemory: A Letter to Chris Marker on Notebook|MUBI</ref> An essay film on the narrativization of Siberia, it contains Marker's signature commentary, which takes the form of a letter from the director, in the long tradition of epistolary treatments by French explorers of the "undeveloped" world. ''Letter ''looks at Siberia's movement into the 20th century and at some of the tribal cultural practices receding into the past. It combines footage Marker shot in [[Siberia]] with old newsreel footage, cartoon sequences, stills, and even an illustration of [[Alfred E. Neuman]] from ''[[Mad Magazine]]'' as well as a fake TV commercial as part of a humorous attack on Western mass culture. In producing a meta-commentary on narrativity and film, Marker uses the same brief filmic sequence three times but with different commentary—the first praising the Soviet Union, the second denouncing it, and the third taking an apparently neutral or "objective" stance.<ref name="Wakeman" />

In 1959 Marker made the animated film ''Les Astronautes'' with [[Walerian Borowczyk]]. The film was a combination of traditional drawings with still photography. In 1960 he made ''[[Description d'un combat]]'', a documentary on the [[Israel|State of Israel]] that reflects on its past and future.<ref name="Wakeman" /> The film won the Golden Bear for Best Documentary at the [[11th Berlin International Film Festival|1961 Berlin Film Festival]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Preise & Auszeichnungen 1961|work=berlinale.de|url=http://www.berlinale.de/de/archiv/jahresarchive/1961/03_preistr_ger_1961/03_Preistraeger_1961.html}}</ref>

In January 1961, Marker traveled to Cuba and shot the film ''¡Cuba Sí!'' The film promotes and defends [[Fidel Castro]] and includes two interviews with him. It ends with an anti-American epilogue in which the United States is embarrassed by the [[Bay of Pigs Invasion]] fiasco, and was subsequently banned. The banned essay was included in Marker's first volume of collected film commentaries, ''Commentaires I'', published in 1961. {{anchor|coréennes}}The following year Marker published ''Coréennes'', a collection of photographs and essays on conditions in [[Korea]].<ref name="Wakeman" />