Synopsis
March 1871. While a journalist from the Versailles television broadcasts soothing, distorted information, a communal television station emerges, an expression of the insurgent people of Paris. In a theatrical setting, more than 200 performers embody, before a mobile camera working in long takes, the characters of the Commune — particularly the residents of the Popincourt neighborhood in the 11th arrondissement — and give voice to their questions about social and political reforms. By focusing on the common people — street children, workers, artisans, small business owners, civil servants, soldiers, intellectuals, clergy, and bourgeois figures — in 1871 Paris, Peter Watkins’ La Commune reminds us that history is a living, ever-evolving material, and that at any moment, we can become lucid, conscious, and responsible protagonists within it.
A word from Tënk
What is the relationship between contemporary history and its hypermediatisation? Do mass media — television reporting, for example — influence and transform our understanding of reality and the events that shape it? This is the question Peter Watkins raises with La Commune (Paris, 1871), a participatory docu-fiction running over 345 minutes (presented here in its shortened 210-minute version), which reimagines the historical events of the Paris Commune in an anachronistic context where journalists and reporters would have been on the ground, interviewing the Communards and broadcasting their words to the population. A unique and groundbreaking film, more necessary than ever in an age of disinformation and fake news.
Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer
