Category: Video

Cinématon 1519 – Ken Loach

Gérard Courant is a French filmmaker, who, at least until 2011, held the distinction of directing the longest film ever made. Clocking in at 192 hours, and shot over 36 years (1978-2006), Cinématon consisted of “a series of over 2,880 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time.” Ken Loach, Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, Terry Gilliam, and Julie Delpy all made appearances.

While making Cinématon, Courant also created another kind of experimental film — what he calls “compressed” films. In 1995, he shot Compression de Alphaville, an accelerated homage to Jean-Luc Godard 1965 sci-fi film, Alphaville. Then came a “compression” (top) of Godard’s À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), the classic of French New Wave cinema.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when Courant came of age as a filmmaker, sculptors like César Baldaccini created art by compressing everyday objects–like Coke cans–into modern sculptures. So Courant took things a step further and figured why not compress art itself. Why not compress a 90 minute film into 3-4 minutes, while keeping the plot of the original film firmly intact.

Along the way, Courant asked himself: Do compressed films honor the original? Does one have the right to touch these masterpieces? And can one decompress these compressed films and then return them to their original form?

via Open Culture

In Conversation – Ken Loach with Cillian Murphy

BFI Fellow Ken Loach joins actor Cillian Murphy In Conversation, having worked together on The Wind That Shakes The Barley, bringing them both a BIFA award for Best Actor and Best Director as well as the Palme d’Or for the film. Ken Loach was awarded the BFI Fellowship in 1996 and became a BAFTA Fellow in 2006, as well as receiving countless international awards for best director and best film for his prolific film and television output. Known for his social realist approach and engagement with socialist themes, including homelessness in Cathy Come Home, the Iraq occupation in Route Irish and resistance in the Spanish Civil War in Land and Freedom, Loach founded independent production company Sixteen Films which continues with strong critical success.

The conversation focuses on Loach’s dedicatation to documenting social and political injustice, the importance of artistic collaboration, the often-overlooked humour in Loach’s films, and the impact working with Loach had on his own approach to acting.

Also highlighted is the controversy surrounding Loach’s trade union documentary A Question of Leadership, intended for national ITV broadcast. It was criticised by the Independent Broadcasting Authority for its explicitly anti-government stance. It was eventually screened a year later, exclusively in the Midlands (tx. 13/8/1981).

Believing that the then-new Channel 4 would be more amenable to politicised documentaries, Loach proposed the four-part Questions of Leadership (1983), a wider-ranging study of the trade union movement – but on viewing the completed programmes’ strong criticism of leading trade unionists, an anxious Channel 4 shortened the series to two parts and proposed screening a ‘balancing’ documentary by a different filmmaker, before scrapping the broadcast altogether.

Documents detailing Questions of Leadership can be read here at the BFI, Special Collections. For more on the Ken Loach documentation collection at the BFI, read Wendy Russell’s report from 2011.

via BFI Screenonline

If I Had Four Dromedaries – ‘Si j’avais quatre dromadaires’ (1966) Chris Marker

Chris Marker’s If I Had Four Dromedaries (1966).

Composed entirely of still photographs shot by Marker himself over the course of his restless travel through twenty-six countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries stages a probing, at times agitated, search for the meanings of the photographic image, in the form of an extended voice-over conversation and debate between the “amateur photographer” credited with the images and two of his colleagues. Anticipating later writings by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag (who professed her admiration for the film) If I Had Four Dromedaries reveals Marker’s instinctual understanding of the secret rapport between still and moving image.

MUBI & letterboxd.com

Clearly, If I Had Four Dromedaries, was a key influence on Marc Karlin’s Nicaragua Part 1: Voyages.

The first part in Marc Karlin’s extraordinary Nicaraguan series, comprises of stills by the American photographer Susan Meiselas. Between 1978 and 1979, Meiselas captured the two revolutionary insurrections which brought the FSLN to power in Nicaragua, overthrowing the fifty year dictatorship of the Somoza family. The film is in the form of a letter, written by Meiselas to Karlin. Through her own words, the film interrogates the responsibility of the war photographer, the line between observer and participant, and the political significance of the photographic image.

Thanks to ChrisMarker.org

 

The Serpent (1997)

Broadcast 21 August 1997, Channel 4 (FILMS OF FIRE) (40 mins)

Filtered through Milton’s Paradise Lost, Michael Deakin, a London architect, decides to rid Britain of Rupert Murdoch and all his works. But ‘The Voice of Reason’ has other plans.

Director – MARC KARLIN
Production Company – LUSIA FILMS
Executive Producer – MAGGIE KOSOWICZ
Producer – MARC KARLIN
Production Assistant – KATIE BOWDEN
Lighting Cameraman – JONATHAN BLOOM
Assistant Camera – MICK DUFFIELD
Sound – JOHN ANDERTON
Gaffer – MATTHEW MOFFATT
Editor – STEVE SPRUNG
Assistant Editor – MARCEL LACUNEO
Dubbing Mixer – CLIFF JONES
On-line Editor – DIMITRIOS EVANGELOU
Production Designer – JUDITH STANLEY-SMITH
Art Assistant – LOUISE SHAW
Costume Designer – ASTRID SCHULZ
Make-up – NORA NONA
Animation – ALEX QUERO – 41 Films
Michael Deakin – NICHOLAS FARRELL
Lenin – RUSS KLINGER
Murdoch – RON BONE
Voice of Reason – FIONA SHAW
Storyteller – SCOTT HANDY
Twin (young) – BOBBI WILLIAMS
Twin (young) – JOSEPH WILLIAMS

Between Times (1993)

Broadcast 4 November 1993 Channel 4 (CRITICAL EYE) (50 mins)
An essay on the future of the British Left, through the different perspectives of A and Z. In their wide-ranging search for alternatives the question is posed – is it still possible, even desirable, to draw a political map?

Director – MARC KARLIN
Script – MARC KARLIN & JOHN MEPHAM
Lighting Cameraman – JONATHAN BLOOM
Sound Recordist – JOHN ANDERTON
Production Manager – CATHERINE OSTLER
Designer – MIRANDA MELVILLE
Editor – STEVE SPRUNG
Online Editor – TOBY RISK
Dubbing Mixer – PETER HODGES
Storyteller – LAHOR RUDDY

A Dream From The Bath (1985)

Commissioned by Large Door and broadcast on Visions, Channel 4’s film programme, 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.

 

Director – MARC KARLIN
Camera – JONATHAN BLOOM
Assistant Camera – JEFF BAGGOTT
Sound – MELANIE CHAIT
Editor – ESTHER RONAY
Assistant Editor – NINA DANINO
Video Editor – KELVIN DUCKETT
Mixer – DAVID OLD
Actors
Women in car – CAROLINE HUTCHINSON
Woman outside cinema – JULIA WATSON
Man outside cinema – PETER HARDING

Thanks to John Cross, Carl Ross, The Rising Sun, St Mawes, Cornwall

Produced by Large Door

Utopias (1989)

Broadcast 1 May 1989 Channel 4 (ELEVENTH HOUR) repeated 2 March 1992 Channel 4 (GLOBAL IMAGE) (135 mins)
Seven visions of socialism invited to the banquet table: former union leader (TGWU), Jack Jones; miner’s wife, Marsha Marshall; London GP, David Widgery; economist, Bob Rowthorn; historian, Sheila Rowbotham; the editor of Race and Class, Ambalavaner Sivanandan; and the Cravendale Furniture Co-operative.

Director – MARC KARLIN
Production Company – LUSIA FILMS
Producer – MARC KARLIN
Script – MARC KARLIN/DAVID GLYN
Editor – BRAND THUMIN
Assistant Editor – ANNA LIEBSCHNER
Lighting Cameraman – JONATHAN BLOOM
Assistant Cameraman – CARL ROSS
Sound Recordist – JOHN ANDERTON
Dubbing Mixer – PETER HODGES
Grip – GLYN FIELDING
Lighting – JO McGINTY/RAY BATEMAN
Production Designer – MIRANDA MELVILLE
Art director – HENRY HARRIS
Assistant Art Director – GINA CROMWELL
Models – JAMES CLANCY
Construction – GUY ROSE/KEVIN MARTIN
1930’s Worker – DUNCAN McDONALD
Thanks to SID BROWN/JOHN GORMAN
Trainee – J.J ODERA
Production Manager – SHELLEY WILLIAMS
Production Accountant – PATRICIA COLLINSON

Marc Karlin’s Nicaragua Series (1985/1991)- Available on Vimeo On-Demand

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.

Nicaragua Part 1: Voyages (1985)

Broadcast 14 October 1985 Channel 4 (ELEVENTH HOUR) (42 mins)
In 1978–79 American photographer Susan Meiselas documented the two insurrections that led to the overthrow of fifty years of dictatorship by the Somoza family in Nicaragua. Through an epistolary exchange over five unedited tracking shots across Meiselas’ photographs, the film articulates her relationship to the history she witnessed.

Nicaragua Part 2: The Making of a Nation (1985)

Broadcast 21 October 1985 Channel 4 (ELEVENTH HOUR) (80 mins)
Shot in 1983–84 and focusing on the work of the Historical Institute, this film witnesses how Nicaraguans are recovering their history, the memory of Sandino’s struggle, to transform their sense of identity.

Nicaragua Part 3: In Their Time (1985)

Broadcast 28 October 1985 Channel 4 (ELEVENTH HOUR) 70 mins
Through the eyes of journalists and photographers working at Barricada, the official publication of the FSLN, the film observes the problems of putting socialism into practice, with reports on the war, the economy, the prison system and the political process leading up to the 1984 elections.

Nicaragua Part 4: Changes

Broadcast 4 November 1985 Channel 4 (ELEVENTH HOUR) (89 mins)
A portrait of a remote area in the rural north of Nicaragua facing difficulties with the revolutionary process. It follows Marlon Stuart, the regional FSLN political organiser, at the time of the 1984 elections.

Scenes For A Revolution (1991)

Broadcast 13 May 1991 Channel 4 (GLOBAL IMAGE) (110 mins)
Karlin returns to Nicaragua after five years to examine the history of the Sandinista government and the prospects for democracy following their defeat in the general election of 1990.

Marc Karlin Collection – Available on Vimeo On Demand

The Marc Karlin film collection available now on Vimeo On-Demand.

Marc Karlin (1943 – 1999)
On his death in 1999, Marc Karlin 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.

This collection consists of the films broadcast on Channel 4 from 1985 to 1997, predominately commissioned by Alan Fountain Senior Commissioning Editor at Channel 4’s Independent Film and Video Department (1981–1994). 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.