Marc Karlin

Marc Karlin was a British filmmaker born in 1943. On his death in 1999, he was described as Britain’s most significant, unknown filmmaker. For three decades, he was a leading figure within Britain’s independent film community, actively contributing to opening up television through Channel 4. He was a founding member of the Berwick Street Film Collective; a director of Lusia Films, a key influence in the Independent Filmmakers Association, and a creative force behind the group that published the independent film magazine, Vertigo (1993-2010).

His groundbreaking films for television in the 1980s and 1990s combine documentary and fiction film conventions to explore the themes of memory, history and political agency. Karlin was a committed political filmmaker, and his dense, yet subtle films are rich meditations on the nature of filmmaking, the impact of ideologies on political choice and formations, and the necessity for rigorous, open interpretation to safeguard the future of the creative, human spirit.

He filmed his way through three decades of huge change, wrestling with the challenges of Thatcher’s free market economics; the demise of manufacturing; the imagining of socialist ways forward after the fall of the Berlin Wall; the role of art in society and the shape-shifting impact of digital technologies: all key concerns relevant to our world today. 

Although informed by an international perspective, most of Karlin’s work focuses on the UK. An exception was the remarkable series of five films on the Nicaraguan revolution encompassing the popular guerrilla war of the late 1970’s, the development of the Sandinista government, the effects of the US-backed contra war, and the defeat of the FSLN in 1989. Rather than foregrounding the Sandinista leadership, the films speak from the grassroots, both urban and rural. This rare perspective portrays a revolution for what it is – an exhausting, uneven process.

The Marc Karlin Archive was co-founded by Holly Aylett, Andy Robson, and Hermione Harris, to recover the work of the radical filmmaker, Marc Karlin. For three decades (1960s-1990s), Karlin was a key member of the UK’s Independent film movement. Since 2011, the Marc Karlin Archive has brought greater visibility to Karlin’s work through publication, research, and screening collaborations.

This included Marc Karlin - Look Again (2015) edited by Holly Aylett and published by Liverpool University Press, providing the first publication on Karlin's films and ideas. It draws exclusively on material from Karlin’s recovered archive, now with the British Film Institute, and includes appraisals both from his collaborators and eminent film theorists including John Akmofrah, Sally Potter, and Sukhdev Sandhu. It still stands as an illuminating addition to the sparse but rapidly expanding field of UK independent film studies.

(Source : www.spiritofmarckarlin.com)