The Clothing of Clio: Chris Marker’s Poetics and the Politics of Representing History

The article builds on and augments my previous work on Chris Marker’s representation of history in my book ‘Sunless’, the first published book on Marker in English. It examines how Marker’s preoccupation with travel in his films can be understood in a wider context of an engagement with the different experiences of modernity in Asia, Africa, Arabia, America and Europe. Examining, the much overlooked, early work of Marker it argues that these films show a sustained engagement with questions of the post-colonial experience in Africa and Asia, themes which continue to inform Marker’s work to the present day.