Category: News
A Time For Invention · A Symposium of Radical Filmmaking
Sheffield Hallam University Thursday, 13 June 2013 from 10:30 to 18:00 (BST) Sheffield, United Kingdom
“We want to make films that unnerve, that shake assumptions, that threaten, that do not soft-sell” Robert Kramer, ‘Newsreel’ Film Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Winter, 1968-69), p.46, University of California Press
The late ’60s and ’70s saw the development of documentary film collectives in the UK that addressed the burning political issues of their day. They developed radical forms of independent film production and distribution prior to digital or the web and produced a large body of work, from short agitational cinetracts to sophisticated essayistic features.
The symposium seeks to re-ignite the work of this radical wave, to ask how they engaged with politics and film and how this might inform politically engaged filmmaking today. It will feature films, and filmmakers, from the ’70s generation alongside radicals of today.
Keynote Speaker: Federico Rossin (Critic and Curator)
Panelists include: Holly Aylett (Vertigo and ‘In the Spirit of Marc Karlin’ project) · Luke Fowler (Artist, Turner Prize Nominee 2012) · Lina Gopaul and David Lawson (Black Audio Film Collective/Smoking Dog Films) · Ann Gueddes (Founder of Cinema Action) · Dan Kidner (Writer and Curator, recently published ‘Working Together: Notes on British Film Collectives in the 1970s’) · Christine Molloy (Artist, Desperate Optimists) · David Panos (Artist, Jarman Award Winner 2011) · Steve Sprung (Cinema Action/Poster Film Collective/Lusia Films)
RELATED TICKETED SHEFFIELD DOC/FEST SCREENINGS:
Wednesday 12 June · 18:45 · Showroom 2
‘The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott‘ (2012) by Luke Fowler
Thursday 13 June · 20:45 · Sheffield Library Theatre
‘The Stuart Hall Project‘ (2012) by John Akomfrah
The symposium is supported by: Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Institute of Arts, Art and Design Research Centre, Sheffield Doc/Fest
Producers: Virginia Heath, Esther Johnson, Steve Sprung
Enquiries: k.a.christer@shu.ac.uk · +44 (0)114 225 6918
Links: https://twitter.com/time4invention ·http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/c3ri/events/a-time-for-invention
A Melody Of On-Rushing Images
©The Marc Karlin Archive
All he had to do was shut his eyes, and on-rush this illness, that half gave him pleasure, half pain. It was a malady of on-rushing images that never seemed to stop… Marc Karlin, A Dream From The Bath (1985)
Last year, with support through The Lipman-Miliband Trust, the Spirit of Marc Karlin project digitised the twelve films directed by Marc Karlin. Here is a screen grab from a selection of the twelve in their timelines.
Picture This Presents Marc Karlin
Picture This, in association with the research project “In the Spirit of Marc Karlin”, is pleased to present an exhibition and screening programme focusing on the work of British Filmmaker Marc Karlin (1943-99). The Video Shop at Picture This hosts a presentation of photographs, documents and journals, whilst at Arnolfini, Picture This will present a weekend of screenings and talks (see below for full programme).
The screening programme at Arnolfini (13 – 15 April) begins with the seminal, Nightcleaners (1974). Initially commissioned as a campaign film in support of an attempt by the women’s movement to unionise London’s night cleaners, the film soon became something else entirely. Shot in black and white, and punctuated with sections of black leader, Nightcleaners fuses political documentary with a rigorous reflection on the materiality of film and the problems of representing struggle. For Memory (1986), featuring E.P. Thomson, explores historical memory, Between Times (1993) looks at the fate of the British Left in the wake of Thatcherism, and The Serpent (1997) is a drama-documentary that portrays Rupert Murdoch as the Satan of Paradise Lost.
Each screening at Arnolfini is followed by a Q&A with one of the filmmaker’s former colleagues, and the weekend concludes with a roundtable discussion featuring all the contributors.
The project is generously supported by Arts Council England. With special thanks to Arnolfini, BFI, LUX, and In the Spirit of Marc Karlin (Holly Aylett, Hermione Harris and Andy Robson).
In The Spirit of Marc Karlin
A research project focusing on the work of British Filmmaker Marc Karlin (1943-99).
In the Spirit of Marc Karlin was set up by Holly Aylett, fellow documentarist and founder member of Vertigo, Hermione Harris, anthropologist, collaborator on Nicaraguan project and partner of Marc Karlin, and film archivist Andy Robson. It aims to secure Marc’s film and paper archive, to facilitate research and publication, and to build a platform for future generations to have access to Marc’s work.
Marc Karlin is an important but neglected figure within the British film avant-garde of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. He was a founder member of the film collectives Cinema Action and the Berwick Street Film Collective, an active member of the film union ACTT and the Independent Filmmakers Association, and he established the journal of independent film, Vertigo, in 1993.
His groundbreaking films for television in the 80s and 90s combined documentary and fiction film tropes to explore the themes of memory, history and political agency. Karlin was, resolutely, a 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.
This project aims to secure Marc’s film and paper archive, to facilitate research and publication, and to build a platform for future generations to have access to Marc’s work.
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