Utopias 1989

Directed by Marc Karlin

Filmed at a time of disillusionment for the British Left - the reverberations of the fall of Communism were causing demoralisation and destabilising old certainties, while change was also afoot in the Labour Party - Utopias questions what was meant by 'socialism' when people were supposedly saying farewell to the term. But rather than seeking to define socialism, director Marc Karlin instead created a series of portraits of people whose lives had intersected with the concept in practical (rather than abstract) terms - it is part of how they define themselves - and asked what 'socialism' meant to them and whether they believed it to be on its way out.