La Commune - de Paris, 1871

The Bristol Radical Film Festival screens socially and politically engaged documentary and fiction films from around the world.

La Commune is an attempt to challenge existing notions of documentary film, as well as the notions of 'neutrality' and 'objectivity' so beloved by the mass media today. We travel back in time to 1871. A journalist for Versailles Television broadcasts a soothing and official view of events while a Commune television is set up to provide the perspectives of the Paris rebels. On a stage-like set, more than 200 actors interpret characters of the Commune. They voice their own thoughts and feelings concerning the social and political reforms.

The telling of this story rests primarily on depicting the people of the Commune, and those who suppressed them. “I hope that the open form of ʻLa Communeʼ, and especially the process of discussion and community activity which can accompany the film screening, will help to forge the kind of collectivity, and frontal resistance to globalization and its satellite mass media which is now needed” (Peter Watkins).

The film lasts 345 mins and will have a 30 minute intermission between parts 1 and 2.

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