Chris Marker: Immemory

The legendary French filmmaker's labyrinthine memoir, first published by Exact Change in 2002 as a CD-ROM, now reconfigured into book form after a laborious process initiated by the artist before his death in 2012. Filmmaker, photographer and writer Chris Marker never adhered to the conventions of a particular art form. Each of his films, from La Jetée. to Sans Soleil. , pushes the boundaries of its medium, merging at times with the essay, political manifesto, personal letter, art installation and even, finally, a computer game. For Immemory. , first published in 1998 (French) and 2002 (English), Marker used a CD-ROM to create a multi-layered, mixed-media memoir. The reader investigates "zones" of travel, war, cinema and poetry, navigating through image and text as if physically exploring Marker's memory itself. The result is a veritable 21st-century Remembrance of Things Past. , an exploration of the state of memory in our era. With it, Marker both invented a literary form and perfected it, just before the digital format he chose for the experiment was quickly rendered obsolete. Immemory: Gutenberg Version. reinvents this unique work for the printed page, a project the author dreamed up, titled, and began working on with Exact Change before his death. Now finally realized, it brings this seminal work into the present and future through a time-tested, durable format of the past: the book. Chris Marker. (1921-2012) served in the French Resistance, and then the US Air Force, during World War II and worked as a journalist while honing his film career. He received international acclaim with La Jetée. in 1962, and became a critical voice in film theory and production as well as a widely admired "cult" artist, a filmmaker's filmmaker.