Chris Marker

writer, photographer, director, creator
Short Film

La jetée

  • The pier
  • La Jetée
  • written and directed by Chris Marker
  • (at movie theaters, France, 16 February 1962) [Accessed at Youtube on 28 February 2022.]

In a world made uninhabitable by the Third World War, a prisoner is chosen as being the only person with vivid enough memories of the past to travel through time and return with salvation.

This 28-minute photo montage with about 1,200 words of narration has a nice seed of an idea, but I find it insulting to other talented filmmakers that Time magazine ranked this sketch of a film as #1 in their 2010 list of best time travel movies. —Michael Main
Tel était le but des expériences : projeter dans le Temps des émissaires, appeler le passé et l’avenit au secours du présent.
translate Such was the purpose of the experiments: to project emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and the Future to the aid of the Present.
A grid of 16 photos from Chris Marker
  • Science Fiction
  • Experimental
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

12 Monkeys


In the year 2035, with the world devastated by an artificially engineered plague, convict James Cole is sent back in time to gather information about the plague’s origin so the scientists can figure out how to fight it. —Michael Main
If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.
The faces of Bruce Willis (as old James with one red eye), Brat Pitt (as young
                James), and Madeline Stowe (as Kathryn) stare out of the shadows.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

12 Monkeys, Season 1


Same pandemic backstory as the movie, similar names for the characters, no Bruce Willis, and a mishmash of time-travel tropes along with tuneless minor-key chords in place of actual tension and slowly spoken clichéd dialogue in place of actual plot. Random discussions of fate brush shoulders with an admixture of possible time travel models from narrative time (when a wound sprouts on old JC’s shoulder while watching young JC get shot), to skeleton timelines (JC thinks that his timeline will vanish if he succeeds), to a fascination with a single static timeline (you’ll see it in Chechnya) and time itself has an agenda. Primarily, we’d say that the story follows narrative time from Cole’s point of view.

By the end of the first season, one principal character has seemingly been trapped in the 2043, and Cole is stuck in 2015, having just gone against fate in a major way, but with a third principal character poised to spread the virus via a jet plane.

P.S. Whatever you do, whether in narrative time or elsewhen, don’t bring up this adaptation as dinnertime conversation with Terry Gilliam (but do watch it if you can set aside angst over a lack of a consistent model and just go with Cole’s flow). —Michael Main
About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]
A man
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel