Pierre Clémenti, emblematic figure of the counter-culture and a darling of many of Europe’s leading filmmakers, also spent time behind the camera as a director. Inspired by American experimental cinema, especially its informal style, Clémenti developed a practice of keeping video diaries, documenting his daily life and that of his entourage with a Super 8 camera. Sympathetic to the cause of the workers and the student uprising, the actor-director goes into the streets of Paris during the tumult of May ’68, documenting the police repression that attempted to violently suppress this populist revolt. This rare colour footage of May ’68 is cut with clips of a bucolic vacation in Rome that Clémenti took with his loved ones and family. By using colour film, double-exposures and experiments with form, Clémenti successfully created a revolutionary film that is both informal and engaged, a psychedelic personal manifesto, that shouts loud and clearly, “The revolution is only a beginning. Let’s continue fighting!”

Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer