"Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve on July 29, 1921, Mr. Marker hid many aspects of his biography. He once claimed he was born in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, though some sources have cited his place of birth as the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. The pseudonym Chris Marker -- which originally appeared in print as "Chris. Marker" -- dates from the late 1940s, when he published criticism, editorials, poetry and fiction. "Sans Soleil" (1982), often acknowledged as the masterpiece among Marker’s late works, is one of his least classifiable, a free-associative mix of ethnography, philosophy and poetry. Purporting to be the footage of a fictional cinematographer accompanied by his letters to a nameless woman, the film roams from Iceland to Guinea-Bissau to Japan. He then made two essays on Soviet cinema and history centered on the neglected director Alexander Medvedkin, one elegy to his friend Andrei Tarkovsky ("One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich") and a portrait of Akira Kurosawa on the set of the 1985 film "Ran" ("A.K.")." - Adriano