"I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, pronounceable in most languages, because I was very intent on traveling. No need to delve further."

The film director — whose 1962 short "La Jetée — was the basis of the 1995 movie "12 Monkeys" — died in Paris on Sunday at the age of 91.

His films often feature a first-person narrator, a device he once called “a sign of humility.” They abound with avatars and alter-egos, including his own cat, Guillaume-en-Egypt, which sometimes appeared, in the flesh and in cartoon form, as his surrogate....

“Sans Soleil” (1982), often acknowledged as the masterpiece among Mr. 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...

Here, you can buy a Criterion Collection DVD containing "La Jetée" and "Sans Soleil." ("La Jetée" is also in this collection) (And here is "12 Monkeys," one of my favorite movies.)