Editing Chris Marker (section)

==SLON and ISKRA (1967–1974)==

In 1967 Marker published his second volume of collected film essays, ''Commentaires II''. That same year, Marker organized the omnibus film ''[[Far from Vietnam|Loin du Vietnam]]'', a protest against the [[Vietnam War]] with segments contributed by Marker, [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], [[Claude Lelouch]], [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]], Michele Ray and [[Joris Ivens]]. The film includes footage of the war, from both sides, as well as anti-war protests in New York and Paris and other anti-war activities.

From this initial collection of filmmakers with left-wing political agendas, Marker created the group S.L.O.N. (''Société pour le lancement des oeuvres nouvelles'', "Society for launching new works", but also the Russian word for "elephant").<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.chrismarker.org/wounded-time/ |title=Wounded Time – Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory |work=Chris Marker |date=30 March 2008 |publisher=Chrismarker.org |access-date=9 August 2012}}</ref> SLON was a film collective whose objectives were to make films and to encourage industrial workers to create film collectives of their own. Its members included Valerie Mayoux, Jean-Claude Lerner, Alain Adair and John Tooker. Marker is usually credited as director or co-director of all of the films made by SLON.<ref name="Wakeman" />

After the events of [[May 1968 in France|May 1968]], Marker felt a moral obligation to abandon his own personal film career and devote himself to SLON and its activities. SLON's first film was about a strike at a Rhodiacéta factory in France, ''[[À bientôt, j'espère]]'' (''Rhodiacéta'') in 1968.<ref name="Wakeman" /> Later that year SLON made ''La Sixième face du pentagone'', about an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., and was a reaction to what SLON considered to be the unfair and censored reportage of such events on mainstream television. The film was shot by [[François Reichenbach]], who received co-director credit. ''La Bataille des dix millions'' was made in 1970 with Mayoux as co-director and [[Santiago Álvarez (filmmaker)|Santiago Álvarez]] as cameraman and is about the 1970 sugar crop in Cuba and its disastrous effects on the country. In 1971, SLON made ''Le Train en marche'', a new prologue to Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin's 1935 film ''Schastye'', which had recently been re-released in France.<ref name="Wakeman" />

In 1974, SLON became I.S.K.R.A. (''Images, Sons, Kinescope, Réalisations, Audiovisuelles'', but also the name of [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s political newspaper ''[[Iskra]],'' which also is a Russian word for "spark").<ref name="Wakeman" />