[yasr_overall_rating]
Workers in a car factory argue with revolutionary students.
In Paris, May 1968, students began occupying Universities and began a massive protest. The protest was anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-establishment. It became such a movement that millions of factory workers in solidarity went on strike with the students. It was quelled after two weeks and most students and workers returned to their usual routines. It was a revolution that never came to fruition and didn’t really change much except perhaps an existential impact on some French minds.
The film was shot on 16mm celluloid with the camera gazing on young students sitting in a quiet flower laced field and actual black and white footage of the 1968 protests. They are discussing their failed revolution, Trotsky, and other left-wing social progressive movements. The camera lingers on the back of the subjects’ heads, like a fly-on-the-wall observing but obfuscating most faces. They are planning how to help striking workers in a factory and how to keep them and other citizens from falling into nationalism and fascism.
The short has a kind of dual track narration of different narrators speaking simultaneously. While it is full of great ideas, it is basically 3 or 4 youths narrating a manifesto at near breakneck pace. This short was, at its most, memorable with moments of quiet chaos showing the protests’ imagery of revolution without any audio. I appreciate the French New Wave veteran Jean-Luc Godard trying a different approach and perspective but I felt it was poorly executed.
Now available on a 6-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray
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