Chris Marker

Chris Marker was born on July 29, 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France as Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve.

Studied philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre in the late 1930s.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 649-654. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

In 1952 Marker made his first film, Olympia 52, a 16mm feature documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games.

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 the Comandante.

He produced "Far from Vietnam," a 1967 documentary made in collaboration with Godard and Resnais that opposed American involvement in Vietnam.

Sent film stock to Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán so that he could make The Battle of Chile: Part I (1975) documenting the military coup in Chile in 1973 after the U.S. pulled film supplies due to ideological differences. Marker told Guzman that what he was trying to do was insane, but he wanted to support him no less.

One of Marker's later works, from the late 1990s, was an interactive CD-ROM called "Immemory" that consists of more than 20 hours of stills, film clips, music, text and sound bites divided into several sections, including poetry, cinema, travel and photography.

He was a director and writer, known for 12 Monkeys (1995), Sans Soleil (1983) and Description d'un combat (1960).

Supported Barack Obama's 2008 bid for the US Presidency by making T-Shirts with his famous cat alter ego reading, "Cats go Barack," and donating the proceeds to Obama's campaign.