The sto­ry of British cinema’s for­got­ten revolutionary

Marc Kar­lin hat­ed silence. His films are a protest against the pas­siv­i­ty of repressed his­to­ry and com­pli­ance with injus­tice. Born in Aarau, Switzer­land in 1943, it was 1960s Paris that taught him to speak. The near-rev­o­lu­tion­ary events of the sum­mer of ​’68 gave him some­thing to say, and tute­lage under film essay­ist Chris Mark­er gave him a language.

Plunged back into the left-wing cul­tur­al explo­sion of 1970s Lon­don, Kar­lin found­ed the Berwick Street Col­lec­tive. In ​’75 the group pro­duced Night­clean­ers, a por­trait of black office clean­ers and their attempts to unionise – now con­sid­ered a land­mark in co-oper­a­tive cin­e­ma. From 1983 to 1999, Kar­lin direct­ed 12 films, most of them for Chan­nel 4 (then the dicey young-guns of British tele­vi­sion). A recent Kar­lin ret­ro­spec­tive at the month-long AV Fes­ti­val in New­cas­tle upon Tyne gave some of these works their first ever cin­e­mat­ic out­ing. A com­mit­ted rad­i­cal artist, Kar­lin would have been delight­ed by the theme of this year’s fes­ti­val, ​‘Mean­while, what about social­ism?’, tak­en from George Orwell’s ​‘The Road to Wigan Pier’.

The glob­al upris­ings of 1968 were the last time the left unit­ed under a red flag. This claim (whether you believe it to be fac­tu­al or not) encom­pass­es many of Karlin’s key con­cerns. First, there’s the state of the left since ​’68: the frag­men­ta­tion, defeats and refor­ma­tions; its failed rev­o­lu­tions and future strate­gies. In 1987’s Utopias, Kar­lin presents sev­en visions for social­ism. Two of these con­nect direct­ly to the 1984 – 85 min­ers’ strike – a co-oper­a­tive uphol­stery busi­ness run by black­list­ed pit­men, and a cam­paign to keep a local col­liery open. The ques­tion that hangs over these tes­ti­monies is: how can the left con­tin­ue unit­ed after such a huge defeat?

This leads to anoth­er ques­tion: what sym­bols does the left still have to unite under? Is the era of the red flag over, and if so is our col­lec­tive his­to­ry irrel­e­vant? Kar­lin address­es this (albeit indi­rect­ly) in his 1993 film Between Times. Two nar­ra­tors – ​‘A’ and ​‘Z’ – debate the future of social­ism. A believes that we must sal­vage the rem­nants of the past, eulo­gis­ing about a pre-Thatch­er world of work­ing class cul­ture and strug­gle; Z argues for mov­ing on – the best we can hope for is a ​‘pol­i­tics for the redemp­tion of time’, in oth­er words to be as free from work as pos­si­ble. A believes in progress found­ed on an under­stand­ing of his­to­ry; Z is con­vinced his­to­ry is cycli­cal, progress an illusion.

A’s project – to nego­ti­ate his affec­tion for the past with the need to forge the future – is made flesh in 1986’s For Mem­o­ry. Kar­lin tracks the left’s shared vic­to­ries and trau­mas, from the Lib­er­a­tion of Belsen to resis­tance against British fas­cism, via Fran­cis Drake, colo­nial­ism and roman­tic poet­ry. We jour­ney to a York­shire pit town, where a pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion details life in the 1930s. The cura­tor – a zeal­ous pro­tec­tor of pro­le­tar­i­an his­to­ry – explains the social rela­tions hid­den in the pho­tos. Marx­ist his­to­ri­an EP Thomp­son lec­tures on the British rad­i­cal tra­di­tion, then attends a memo­r­i­al ser­vice for the three muti­nous Lev­ellers exe­cut­ed in 1649. A Jew­ish Eas­t­en­der recounts the Bat­tle of Cable Street, a folk­loric vic­to­ry against fas­cism, as the cam­era cuts to the prepa­ra­tion of a com­mem­o­ra­tive mur­al. These strands of mem­o­ry and sym­bol­ism may seem like wist­ful navel-gaz­ing, but their impor­tance has nev­er been more rel­e­vant. The cur­rent Labour leader Jere­my Cor­byn is a roman­tic social­ist – his ascen­den­cy is, in part, thanks to a con­stituen­cy that are still moved by the ​‘scar­let stan­dard’. Karlin’s films press this con­stituen­cy to assess whether the tra­di­tion­al sym­bols of the left still have a place in post-Thatch­er Britain.

There were three prime movers of 1968: rad­i­cal stu­dents, trade unions and the free love lib­er­tar­i­ans. While these caus­es splin­tered and diverged after 1979, Kar­lin retained the best of each of them – rev­o­lu­tion­ary social­ism from the stu­dents, a con­cern for work­ing class life from the unions, and an open dia­logue with sec­ond wave fem­i­nism from the lib­er­tar­i­ans. In the con­text of insur­rec­tion and indus­tri­al action, Karlin’s fem­i­nist lean­ings are easy to neglect. But appre­ci­at­ing their impor­tance is para­mount to under­stand­ing the kind of pol­i­tics he strove for.

In 1985’s Nicaragua, a series of four films chron­i­cling the upris­ing against the repres­sive Somoza régime and the sub­se­quent civ­il war between the San­din­ista gov­ern­ment and US-fund­ed con­tras, Kar­lin finds female voic­es both inside and out­side the rev­o­lu­tion. They’re artists, activists, archivists, lead­ers, work­ers and moth­ers. One peas­ant, wid­owed but still work­ing the land, explains how life after the San­din­ista rev­o­lu­tion is tough; she’s con­sid­ered remar­ry­ing but finds sin­gle life lib­er­at­ing. Togeth­er, the Nicaragua films pos­sess both the his­tor­i­cal rigour of Patri­cio Guzmán’s The Bat­tle of Chile and the philo­soph­i­cal ambi­tion of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing; they are the work of a poet dis­guised as a pamphleteer.

Women also enrich and add nuance to Karlin’s account of trade union decline. In a scene from Between Times, a work­er for a data-pro­cess­ing com­pa­ny describes how the job’s flex­i­bil­i­ty suits her car­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties. One of the most dis­tinct voic­es in Utopias is Mar­sha Mar­shall, a miner’s wife who describes how most organ­is­ing groups made her feel intim­i­dat­ed and infe­ri­or. Kar­lin gave space to female expe­ri­ence that con­tra­dict­ed tra­di­tion­al left-wing strat­e­gy, and he was hap­py to find the left wanting.

The sets and dio­ra­mas that pop­u­late Karlin’s films bor­row from a dra­mat­ic tra­di­tion, stretch­ing from Punch and Judy to Ger­man Expres­sion­ism. His films are lit­er­ary, with chap­ters, text and ref­er­ences to Mil­ton and Blake; they con­tain nar­ra­tors who prob­lema­tise author­ship, refract­ing the sto­ry through mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives. But above all, Karlin’s work is cin­e­mat­ic. He was a mas­ter of super­im­po­si­tion, and brought dra­ma to still images (long before Asif Kapa­dia was win­ning Oscars for it). And, like the French New Wave direc­tors he idolsied, Kar­lin was a pio­neer of the track­ing shot.

The clos­est Kar­lin came to a pure cin­e­ma that blurs the bound­aries between essay, doc­u­men­tary and nar­ra­tive was in his late-peri­od shorts. The Ser­pent, an hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry indict­ment of mid­dle class col­lu­sion in the media, tells the sto­ry of an archi­tect who dreams of get­ting inside Rupert Murdoch’s ear. It’s dense with film ref­er­ences, from Luis Buñuel to Jean Cocteau, Pow­ell and Press­burg­er and Andy Warhol, and makes Char­lie Kaufman’s aes­thet­ic look con­ser­v­a­tive and bland by com­par­i­son. Despite direct­ing films exclu­sive­ly for tele­vi­sion, Kar­lin undoubt­ed­ly expand­ed our film lan­guage. He demon­strat­ed the pover­ty of most doc­u­men­taries, which through plain­ness try to con­vince us of their authenticity.

Rest­less, Kar­lin would find motifs and dis­card them. The image of a spin­ning die book­ends the first chap­ter of Nicaragua: Changes, and then it’s sim­ply reject­ed. Kar­lin finds these pow­er­ful visu­al metaphors, iden­ti­fies their inad­e­qua­cy and moves on. But it’s a mis­take to see this digres­sive ten­den­cy as whim­sy. Noth­ing is final in Karlin’s films. Every­thing is under revi­sion, because so is the rev­o­lu­tion – it con­tin­ues, per­pet­u­al­ly, even after the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies claim vic­to­ry. Film is under­stood as a process, which is why Kar­lin favours track­ing over pan­ning. The pan can go 360 degrees and pur­port to show us every­thing, but when the track ends it implies that there is more left out­side the frame. The pan gives lib­er­a­tion a com­plete­ness which it nev­er pos­sess­es. In the 1980s, track­ing shots were con­sid­ered too stylised for doc­u­men­tary; in For Mem­o­ry, Kar­lin goes to a demen­tia ward and tracks, for sev­er­al auda­cious min­utes, objects that feed the patients’ nos­tal­gia – bob­bins, a docker’s hook, a tin of Lyles’ Gold­en Syrup. In this con­text, track­ing is radical.

In Nicaragua: Mak­ing of a Nation, march­ing San­din­istas chant the refrain ​‘no one can take away my right to make demands.’ Kar­lin seeks to com­pli­cate our dreams. He finds incon­sis­ten­cy and com­plic­i­ty. Rarely does he solid­i­fy our hopes into propo­si­tions. (Does it even make sense to request that mem­o­ry be sown into the fab­ric of utopias, and utopias into the fab­ric of mem­o­ry?) When they do come, Karlin’s demands are dif­fuse and con­tra­dic­to­ry, but one shines through in its urgent sin­cer­i­ty: the demand for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary cinema.

AV Fes­ti­val runs until 27 March across New­cas­tle and the sur­round­ing region. Find out more at avfes​ti​val​.co​.uk

Sam Thomp­son is edi­tor of Whitey on the Moon