A Film by Peter Watkins
Production:13 Production, La Sept Art,
Musée d'orsay
1999 /France/ B&W/345 minutes
French with English and Chinese Subtitles
http://www.mnsi.net/~pwatkins/
http://www.rebond.org/

1.

'Look! This is where we shot the last scene yesterday.' Two actors show the camera (us) the set where La Commune was made. Please do not think you are watching a documentary of the film for the camera will soon become the journalist/ cameraman of the Commune TV, going about interviewing people. Yes, I mean TV! In the film, you will watch TV news in 1871! Do not mistake this film for a farce as Peter Watkins is more serious than anybody else and few can match his concern for the society. He is also an ardent inventor in film and television arts. Anachronism is just one of his alienating tactics. In this film, actors sometimes play the roles and sometimes play themselves to talk about their feelings at the moment and commend on the characters. When a group of Commune women shift their discussion of French women’s predicaments in 1871 to that of 1999, men in the commune are talking about TV, the modern media, and the decline of Japan. Issues of different times and places juxtapose, intersect, and reflect on each other pressing and close to home.

As a film artist and activist, Watkins challenges the director centered traditional undemocratic way of filmmaking that renders audience as passive recipients. Watkins meticulously designed and controlled the production of La Commune but he also demanded and gave plenty of room for active participations from the actors. The director provides the backbone and the framework while everybody involved fills in the flesh and blood. For example, the important components of the film ---dialogues and discussions--- are taken from real discussions among actors during rehearsals who were told to play out the characters they have meticulously researched as well as their real selves in present day France. This is democratic collective creation in a controlled manner. On the activist level, he laments the lost of commitment and idealism and explains on his website why he made this film: “. . . the idea of commitment to a struggle for a better world, and of the need for some form of collective social Utopia [Paris Commune] - which WE now need. . . “and review many of the issues raised in the Commune but still failed to be resolve today. Therefore, he alienates the audience but requires them and the actors to participate at the same time in discussing many of the issues. For this purpose, he left a lot of space and information for audience to discuss (He did not mention it but such practice reminds me of an Argentinean documentary, Hours of the Furnaces, where the film stopped screening midway and asked audience to start discussion). The discussions inside and outside the film are parts of a social action. People playing members of the Women’s Union in the Commune later actually formed a group to fight for the issues raised in the film. Thus social action steps out of the screen and into our real lives. La Commune is Watkins at his best and is exemplary of using filmmaking as social action. In Britain, only Ken Loach’s works can barely match the strong social and political sense of Watkins’ and Watkins has an edge over Peter Greenaway in setting his experimentations on solid social grounds. This short introduction can hardly do justice to such a rich film as how to show and use the film already require great wisdom. I better leave our clever audience to fathom its depths.

***

2.

Inside a giant warehouse in a working-class Parisian suburb, Peter Watkins assembles a cast of over 200 non-professional actors (though their amateur status is undetectable). Basing their work upon thorough historical research, they will attempt tore- create the events of March, 1871-the rise and fall of the Paris Commune.

La Commune (Paris, 1871) explores that famous, brief, romantic, and tragic period when poor and working-class Parisians rose up against the “bourgeois” French national government, which fled the capital and re-established itself in Versailles. As this complex historical drama unfolds, it is also “ covered” by two television news crews – one from “National TV Versailles” which broadcasts the official version of events, the other from “Commune TV,” giving voice to the rebellious Communards.

Mixing past and present, revolutionary in form as well as content, Watkins’s audacious masterpiece forces us to confront notions of a safe or objective reading of the past, and also to reflect, inevitably, upon the present. No one who meets the challenge of La Commune (Paris, 1871) will be unchanged by the experience.

French with English and Chinese Subtitles

2008/10/18 (sat) 15:00
Venue: Hong Kong In-media
Add:9/f Foo Tak Bldg, 365 Hennessy Rd,
Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Arrangement: 6hour non-stop screening*

2008/10/25 (sat) 15:00
Venue:MacAuley Theatre, Arts Centre
Arrangement: Dinner break for the hkac staff
Screening will be in 2 section:
1)15:00-18:00
2)19:30-22:30

2008/11/8 (sat) 15:00
Venue: Tong 3/F
Add: 3/F, 716 Shanghai Street,
Prince Edward, Kowloon(near Bute Street)
Arrangement: 6hour non-stop screening*
We will provide some food and drinks at the balcony. A TV showing the film simultaneously will be set up in the washroom)

2008/11/22 (sat) 15:00
Venue:Room A104K , Polytechnic University
Arrangement: To be announced

smff@HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity
23/11/2008(sun)12:00
venue: HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity
Add: 135 Junction Road, Kowloon City, Hong Kong (map and traffic)
Arrangement: 15:30-16:00 Rest;
16:00-19:00 Part 2

* The 6-hours non-stop screening arrangement is to realize the point that there is no pause and rest when reality is in action. To rest or pause is actually a decision to surrender, even though temporarily, your right to participate. Catering to basic living needs, arrangement and setup will be in place.

The 6th Hong Kong Social Movement Film Festival
main

Presented by ：autonomous8a (social movement resource centre)　and　v-artivist