Marc Karlin: Look Again (Hardback)

This book provides almost the only published resource on the work of Marc Karlin. On his death in 1999, Karlin was commemorated as one of the visionaries of independent British film culture, with its roots in the seventies and its expansion in the first decades of Channel 4 television. This edited collection will profile his films and ideas, drawing exclusively on documents and correspondence from his recently recovered archive. It includes appraisals both from his collaborators and eminent film theorists, and is an illuminating addition to the sparse but rapidly expanding field of independent cinema studies.

Marc Karlin was an incisive, witty man and a passionate advocate for an inclusive cultural space. 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.

The book is structured through four contextualizing essays followed by twelve chapters expressing the focus and aesthetic of his documentaries and cultural politics. It combines academic analysis with memoir, and includes a recorded discussion on Karlin's creative practice, his unpublished writings on cinema and over 150 images from his films. With a foreword by UK's celebrated film director, Sally Potter MBE, this book presents the reader with an illustrated mosaic of encounters engaging with the spirit of this remarkable man, and will ensure that his work is restored to the canon of British cinema.

Editor Holly Aylett is a film-maker, writer and Senior Research Fellow at London Metropolitan University's Global Policy Institute, specialising in audio-visual and cultural policy. In the 1980s she co-founded Broadside, the women's collective which produced Channel 4's first current affairs strand. With Marc Karlin and others she set up Vertigo magazine, being Managing Editor 2001-10. She founded the Independent Film Parliament, 2003-07, and currently directs the UK Coalition for Cultural Diversity (UKCCD).

Contents:

Foreword - Sally Potter
Preface - Holly Aylett

Contexts

What Holds All This Together - Sukhdev Sandhu
Common Endeavours - Mike Chanan
Alive Between Times - Holly Aylett
Illumination and the Tyranny of Memory - John Akomfrah
Working With Marc Roundtable - edited by Andy Robson

For Memory

In the Tracks of a Fellow Traveller - John Gianvito
Diary and Notebook
Letter: Don Macpherson to Marc Karlin
Letter: Marc Karlin to Hermione Harris
Notebook
Email: Don Macpherson to Andy Robson
Letter: Barry Gavin to Peter Sainsbury (BFI)

Films:

A Dream from the Bath

Nicaragua
Close-up on Revolution - Monica Henríquez 
A Shared Experience - Hermione Harris 
Marc Karlin's Gaze - Carlos Fernando Chamorro
Letters: Marc Karlin to Susan Meiselas
Letters: Danial Martinez to Marc Karlin 
Letter: Marc Karlin to Alan Fountain
Postcards: Stephen Rea to Marc Karlin

Utopias
Working with Marc
Preview: John Little, CIty Limits
Preview: Stephen Pope, The Independent

Between Times
Thinking and Acting with Film - Steve Sprung
The British Left: Between Times in the 1990s - Sheila Rowbotham
Now I Know Why I Did It! - Alan Fountain
Letter: Jonathan Bloom to Marc Karlin
Letter: Marc Karlin to Jonathan Bloom
Preview: Time Out
Letter: Marc Karlin to Alan Fountain

Outrage
Working with Marc
Letter: Marc Karlin to John Wyver
Notebook
Letter: Marc Karlin to John Wyver
Notebook
Draft Screenplay
Letter: James Leashy to Marc Karlin
Letter: Michael Kustow to John Wyver
Preview, Time Out

The Serpent
Postcard: Fiona Shaw to Marc Karlin
Feature: Rob Brown, The Independent
Preview: Lisa Mullen, Time Out

The Haircut
Working with Marc
Letter: Heathcote Williams to Marc Karlin
Preview: Beth Twiston Davies, Daily Telegraph
Preview: Tim Allen, The Observer

Unfinished Stories
The Last Man Left - Michael Eaton
A Walk through the Strange Museum - Andy Robson
Faxes: Marc Karlin and Michael Eaton
An Aspiration, The Last Man Left
Letter: Ben Gibson (BFI) to Marc Karlin
Letter: Marc Karlin to Michael Eaton
Synopsis: Milton
Storyboard: Milton

Activist and Advocate
By Example - Gareth Evans
Vertigo editorial: Marc Karlin
Vertigo editorial: Marc Karlin
Interview: Patrick Wright with Marc Karlin
Independent Film-Making in the 70s
Channel 4 and Independence
Feature: Hall of Mirrors, Marc Karlin

Biography
A Memory of Friendship - Hugh Brody
Tribute: Dad, Alexis Karlin
Tribute: Seamus Heaney poem, chosen by Anna Karlin

Filmography
Contributors
Further Reading
Photo Acknowledgments
Index