6 March 2015, 19:00, Birkbeck Cinema

In the third prelude to the Essay Film Festival 2015, Holly Aylett presented three films by Marc Karlin.

On his death in 1999, Marc Karlin was described as Britain’s most significant “unknown” filmmaker. For three decades, he was a key figure within Britain’s independent film community; a founding member of the Berwick Street Film Collective, active within the Independent Filmmakers Association, a vital voice in the creation of Channel 4, and a founding member of a group that published the independent film journal, Vertigo, in 1993. His ground-breaking films for television in the 1980s and 1990s combine documentary and fiction film tropes to explore the themes of memory, history and political agency. Karlin was a committed political filmmaker, but his dense, yet subtle films are also rich meditations on the nature of filmmaking, the formation and collapse of ideologies, and the endurance of the human spirit.

Holly Aylett is a documentary filmmaker, a founder member of Vertigo, and co-founder of the Marc Karlin Archive. [Link: https://spiritofmarckarlin.com]  

Films: For Memory, Marc Karlin, UK, 1982, digital, 104 minutes [extracts], English
“For Memory is a film and television programme about remembering [...] Made by Karlin as a solo director, it is essayistic in form, and rather than focussing on a single ‘cause’, it fuses a vast array of different sources under a single but broad concept: the notion of popular memory, and the need to preserve it.” (source: LUXonline)

A Dream from the Bath, Marc Karlin, UK, 1985, digital, 22 minutes, English
“Commissioned by Large Door and broadcast on Visions, Channel 4’s film programme, A Dream from the Bath is a response to the Film Act of 1985, questioning the role of cinema in structuring our sense of belonging, and the need for a pluralist cinema free of national stereotypes.” (source: spiritofmarkkarlin website)

The Serpent, Marc Karlin, UK, 1997, digital, 40 minutes, English
“The Serpent (1997) is a drama-documentary about Rupert Murdoch. Borrowing from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Karlin tells the tale of commuter Michael Deakin (Nicholas Farrell), self-appointed archangel, who falls asleep on his train and dreams of ridding Britain of the Dark Prince (Rupert Murdoch). The Voice of Reason stops him and not only exposes the futility of Deakin’s quest but confronts us, the silent majority, with our complicity in Murdoch’s rise to power.” (source: spiritofmarkkarlin website)