"A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT" "Part one FRAGILE HANDS" "Music for credits LUCIANO BERIO" "Editing and soundtrack CHRIS MARKER" "Do you come often to these steps with the tourists?" "Yes, quite often." "Sometimes twice or three times a day" "I've been working for years as an Intourist interpreter in Odessa" "A U.S flyer talks to a film camera" "The Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s was the Spanish War of the day is the Spanish War" "But under the conditions of the time the Spanish War in that context, the betrayal of the western democracies was a lost cause" "It was a cause which mobilized, crystallized, hindered" "But objectively it was a lost cause" "Whereas the Vietnam War is the Spanish War but with a chance of defeating imperialism in a specific spot of the globe" "He is explaining to you about psychological warfare..." "How psychological warfare can force or bring about the enemy's surrender" "Vietnam, 1967" "Peace Demonstration Washington D.C. 1967" "Vietnam was and still is the only issue that can mobilize the masses in Sweden and in Paris in the United States and in Moscow in Peking as in New Delhi... or Algiers" "That is to say, never before has history placed a nation at such a point of convergence for all the world's contradictions" "And it's because people around the world felt concern for the Vietnamese struggle that they are fighting now for independence, for socialism and for peace" "Everyone was affected by the Vietnamese people" "And what is exemplary, in our opinion is the Vietnamese modesty and realism" "They are a nation which, under its party leadership makes no recriminations, shows no bitterness" "Nor has it any illusions" "And it relies on its own strength" "It can mobilize all its people under the leadership of a communist party enjoy socialist solidarity and popular world support without forgetting it must first rely on itself" "And as far as the Vietnamese are concerned there is no doubt that for an intelligent, "realistic" mind to decide to free Vietnam in the face of American involvement was, obviously, sheer madness" "I went to Indo-China at 18 and I was 20 when I returned to France" "I learnt a lot from my militant friends in Indo-China" "In Indo-China I knew quite a few "republican fighters"..." "They were communist officers, all dead now" "I was sent to Indo-China to fight the Yellow Peril, naturally" "After a while I saw it wasn't right to fight the Yellow Peril" "And then I met those republican officers" "I worked with them on and off and I discovered books!" "I discovered people with names like Jaurès," "Lenin and so on" "I came back" "And I realised that the people working in the factories though unable to express it clearly were very like the militants I'd met in Indo-China" "And I realised that the issues which had to be tackled the issues I've been introduced to could only be resolved through them:" "the workers" "I am certain that you will celebrate your victory by returning home as united in purpose as when you left" "For you must be bound by unity in tomorrows daily struggle and in future confrontations, for the struggle will be long" "Strengthen your unions and work for their unity because there cannot be a strong working class without powerful unions" "The power of the unions must surpass the combined power of the employers and government" "You mean, recover the wages we've lost?" "It's bound to take two or three years" "I don't know" "But how did you hold on over these two months?" "We held on" "The fishermen helped us, so we had fish" "We queued like in the war" "Good..." "I mean bad memories" "It was tough, but we had that kind of..." "An old bloke said: "In the last 2 months I've felt alive again"" "People who would hardly strike for one hour have been on strike for 2 months" "They saw it wasn't too hard to do without lots of things ...which they'd thought were indispensable until then" "That those things were not really essential while what was essential was their dignity as men" "It won't end here" "We're definitely going to hear about it for a long time" "We'll say:" "Remember back in 1967?" "We really feel that we've gone through a movement" "Our elders always said 1936 was something else" "We'll say:" ""1967 wasn't bad either"" "The Shah of Iran, torturer of journalist Shirazi... and ministers Fatemi and Lofti of 71 opposing officers, of hundreds of communists, civilians and students..." "It was the events of 2nd June:" "The Shah was in Berlin, students demonstrated against him and one student was killed" "The man who is cashing 400 M. $ while his subjects starve ...is welcomed to West Berlin" "We are moving towards the Shah and he is moving towards us" "A commando of the Iranian secret police faces the demonstrators" "The most frightening thing was when a dozen young people armed with sticks and truncheons approached us striking left and right" "A stick was raised over me and people thought: "They'll crack the old man's skull"" "They pulled me and I fell" "We're dealing with the limits of the system's organized violence" "This reveals the inherent weakness in our actions" "They're unorganized." "No one directs them" "They're developed spontaneously by the demonstrators" "The fact that nothing is being directed is good, but also very dangerous" "Organized counter-violence can crush us, as it did on 2nd June" "Germany has been a stimulus." "Why?" "Because the German students showed us that it was possible ...to make collective demands in a university and also to come up with radical questions about society ...which can lead to radical transformations" "That's been the nature of Germany's stimulus" "But on the other hand, the situation here is different" "You also have to highlight the particular situation in France" "We have a French Communist Party" "So we have an opposition which doesn't exist in Germany" "June 2nd showed us the gathering of the Third World in Berlin" "Because, after all, the Shah represents a part of the Third World" "A world which will include half the globe's population by 1970 but which only owns a sixth of its wealth" "So those of us in the metropolis can develop our conscience not because we're an élite but because we have the chance" "We must use all our strength to fight this system which is leading to disaster" "La Paz, Bolivia, June 1967" "Black Panther Rally, San Francisco" "Peking, 1967" "Paris, 1967" "I hope playing wrong notes in music will save me playing wrong notes in politics" "There are those who call themselves revolutionaries who are actually acting against the revolution" "They demoralize the masses" "They exploit the slightest setback to discredit the struggle against imperialism" "Instead of instilling in the people a sense of struggle, of sacred duty to the fight they try to sow discouragement" "They support those opposed to the guerrillas" "They support those who desert the guerrillas" "Look at the example in Venezuela where the reactionary, rightist leadership of the Communist Party has betrayed the guerrillas, now abandoned in the mountains" "It has betrayed the very men who upheld the flag of the struggle" "Venezuela, 1963 Falcon Mountain" "We often say that there is a struggle between the opposition and the government" "But we go much further" "The struggle is not between opposition and government" "It is a struggle of the poor against the rich" "Of course the guerrillas' greatest flaw is their lack of experience" "That comes with time" "But a few Latin Americans have a lot of experience" "That's the case with Commander Guevara" "I have no doubt that whichever country, whichever guerrilla front benefits from Commander Guevara's cooperation the principles of guerrilla war will be followed to the letter" "And it will serve as a model example" "It will show that when the art of guerrilla warfare is correctly practiced failure is just not possible" "I had a conversation with Fidel in February 1966" "Che was no longer in Cuba but I could imagine where he was and certainly where he'd come from" "That's when I learnt that he'd gone to the Congo after his spectacular departure and his farewell letter which everyone is familiar with" ""Fidel, I remember many things" ""Our meeting at Maria Antonia's..." ""Your offer to accompany us..." ""All the tension of the preparations" ""One day we were asked who to inform in case of our death" ""...and the idea that this was possible shocked us all" ""Later we knew that's how it was" ""In a revolution - in genuine revolution " ""one either conquers or dies" ""I have now finished the part of my work..." ""...which tied me to Cuban territory..." ""...and I take my leave..." ""...of you, my comrades, your nation which is now mine" ""If I look back on my life..." ""..." "I believe I have worked honestly to consolidate..." ""...the revolution" ""My only serious error was..." ""...not to have trusted you enough..." ""...from the start, at the Sierra Maestra" ""Not to grasp your talents as a revolutionary leader fast enough" ""I lived through great events" ""I was proud to belong to that people..." ""...during those sad clear days of the Missile Crisis" ""Other lands throughout the world" ""have need of my modest efforts"" "Despite the aura of revolutionary romanticism that one may encounter when dealing with him..." "Che lays himself on the line for his beliefs." "Not many do that" "What is it you see in Guevara - an ideological guide?" "No." "If we had to name an ideological guide it would be Marx" "Isn't Marx a bit old-fashioned ?" "I don't find Marx old-fashioned" "Nor is Sta..." "I mean Lenin old-fashioned either" "Today, just as in Marx's day, there are people who are uneducated, who suffer, who go hungry" "There's always the same systematic exploitation" "Marx isn't old-fashioned" "It must be admitted that one factor has contributed to this lack of political culture" "That is not only the usage but the abuse of the manuals of Marxism-Leninism" "One must admit they're full of clichés so many stereotyped phrases even, although our aim is not to analyze the manuals even downright lies!" "It's often believed that all revolutionaries belong to a party or a sect" "While we believe that there are many revolutionaries amongst the young and amongst people outside parties," "these new people are at odds with this lukewarm model this feeble pseudo-example offered by some who call themselves revolutionaries" "When, for example, it was a question of the over-publicized intercontinental missiles" "The next day everyone here talked about them and depended on them just as if they held them in their own pockets" "In our opinion this gave rise to a tendency to apathy" ""We are protected, let's sit back and relax"" "Whereas the only right, intelligent thing to do the only revolutionary thing to do was to rely on ourselves, ...our own strength" "We must never slacken our own efforts" "So that when we found ourselves compelled to confront the aggression of our imperialist enemies we would rely first on ourselves and solely on ourselves" "We would be ready to pay a high price knowing that NOBODY will defend us" "There is a painful reality" "Vietnam embodies the hopes of an entire, forgotten world yet stands tragically alone" "Solidarity with the people of Vietnam... is like the crowd's support for the gladiators of the Roman arena" "You don't wish the victim well so much as share his faith accompany him in death or in victory" "If we analyze Vietnamese isolation we feel the anguish of this moment for mankind" "America is guilty of aggression" "Its immense crimes cover the globe, we know that" "But others are also guilty, those who when it came to it hesitated to make Vietnam inviolable socialist territory" "Yes, they would have risked war on a world scale but it would have forced an American decision" "Also guilty are those who wage a war of insults and tricks begun by representatives of the two great socialist powers" "What a noble nation this is, how stoical and courageous" "Mr Wallander, Pentagon" "Major "Papy" Shelton" "Here are some more pictures" "And another" "They're not clear on screen - they were taken from a newspaper" "So they've lost detail" "The staff met to decide what was to be done with Che" "The decision was taken in La Paz" "They proposed to give me my freedom if I would sign a public ideological retraction" "If you look closely at all the documents nowhere will you find ...any kind of undertaking from the communist party or any of its leaders to collaborate with Che in Bolivia" "There is none!" "And yet Che has turned up here" "What explanation is there for this situation?" "You have to think back to what happened in the Congo and about the time that has elapsed since he disappeared from Cuba" "And when it comes down to it about the need to explain things before public opinion" "His letter of farewell was for the Congo" "Not one revolutionary ever imagined that he would first succeed in the Congo and then succeed elsewhere" "One goes somewhere, then commits one's life to that place!" "That didn't work for several reasons..." "And he found himself forced to leave Africa and find a way out" "He himself told me:" ""I couldn't go back to Cuba." "That was ruled out" ""The manner of my departure was much too solemn"" "Consequently he needed a place from which to reappear" "And Bolivia lent itself to that, amongst other reasons because we were getting ready and they knew it" "So he told me:" ""I can't give you the revolutionary leadership..." ""...because you don't believe in the guerrilla" ""You have other plans" ""You believe in a kind of national uprising..." ""...without a date or a fixed time..." ""...based on the evolution of contradictions"" "I told him:" ""Yes, you've understood me..." ""I don't believe guerrilla warfare leads to revolution"" "And what if you met Che today?" "I think Che would have a better understanding of the situation" "Instead of me having to understand his tactics I believe he would understand where I stood in 1967" "What's more, I think he would prove me right!" "A cursory view might be: "How could such a valued leader..." ""...end up in such an adventure..." ""...shot in a ravine?"" "Some might say that ending was a mark of failure" "While others want to see it as a valued confirmation of success" "We think that Che managed to crystallize, in an extreme fashion the alternatives and the desire for liberation" "We believe it's that, rather than any specific episode which explains why, from Caracas to Buenos Aires or in Santiago the image of Che dominates the demonstrations" "Of course it's due to his personality" "But he gave form to he inspired a deep feeling, more than his personality" "A feeling which transcends any rational analysis" "And which represents a phenomenon across the continent:" "a latent but decisive power" "I greet the year 1968 with satisfaction because... 11th April, 1968" "In a few minutes, when I finish work, I'll go to stand guard beside the coffin of a certain Léon Nicod who has died, aged 82" "Died, like all true communists in complete destitution" "The Party was his family." "The Party was his life" "He founded it and carried it in his arms for more than twenty years" "He was struck twenty times by the cops on horseback or in armor" "They interrogated him a thousand times" "He spent several years in prison" "I hardly knew him, just enough to see he was a very intelligent man with great humility, gentleness and extreme patience" "He sacrificed everything to the Party, to the working-class including his family" "He never had the time to live, to travel to taste any of the things he fought for" ""Courage doesn't mean screaming in the street:" ""Ho Chi Minh or Guevara"" ""Courage, for an intelligent man, is not minding..." ""...making himself a damned nuisance" ""I have the false courage to get myself shot tomorrow..." ""in a revolutionary resistance, in the name of the Revolution" ""But I've never had that true courage, the daily courage..." ""...which means sacrificing identity to be effective" ""Here you are" ""I'm writing to you" ""That's not true." "I'm writing as much to myself as to you" ""And more likely to twenty others" ""What more is there to say?" ""That between the castle and the garden..." ""..." "lies the dictatorship of the proletariat?" ""The working-class is neither beautiful nor good, nor romantic" ""It is brutal" ""The working-class is right" ""It needs no explanation"" "There is also the fact that man is a strange, curious animal extremely sensitive to his surroundings" "This is because of all animals, he has the strongest emotions ...and the most developed perceptibility" "I think what happened was the crystallization of one emotion ...which stemmed from, and fed off, the student movements" "Because you mustn't forget that it all started in a stand of solidarity with the students following the incidents prompted by the police being ordered to go to the Sorbonne" "I mean that we are, in fact, occupying the Sorbonne" "Paris, Left Bank, May 6th" "What will you do?" "My intention is to say "yes" to constructive dialogue and "no" to violence" "The escalating violence must be stopped" "We must cool things down" "We must restore calm and allow everyone to think things over" "Youth is expressing a hatred for a certain society ...and building barricades" "Paris, Left Bank, 1977" "We'll occupy the Latin Quarter without provoking the police" "We won't attack the police" "The barricade almost reaches the second floor" "There's a flag above the barricade, as in 1848, a black flag, a red flag..." "The atmosphere seems fairly peaceful, even good-natured" "Until a moment ago it was still quite calm, just as you said" "But we've just heard word that the police are about to react, so now I'm asking the defenders not to stand on the barricade" "A barricade is for protection." "Stand behind the barricade" "Not on the cars, behind them" "Listen, I'm breathless, I've been talking for an hour" "I must say - it's a sad sight, this street... the whole Boulevard St Michel quarter" "I was on the barricades" "When I got involved I never talked of reformism" "I saw only one thing:" "how would I chuck De Gaulle and the whole bloody bourgeoisie" "The parliamentarians argued for ten years" "And in ten years they achieved nothing" "While we, on the barricades, brought the state to its knees" "We're in a position of strength" "I don't think that now, at this moment precisely... we can say if the process of toppling the state is in motion" "If you ask me what I really think, at the moment I'd say no" "Still, we should let this process develop see how far it goes and set things within those limits" "We have always taken our responsibilities day by day and hour by hour" "None of us knew six days ago what we'd be doing next day" "We've acted according to circumstances and I think we've been right" "In any case, public opinion has proved us right" "We'll carry on at this level" "So you believe these events are inspired from abroad?" "Yes, I certainly think so" " What makes you think so?" " The events" "But what?" "Can you explain?" "It's anarchy..." "they're anarchists from abroad" "French or not, they respect nothing, they sacrilege" "What do you think of Cohn-Bendit?" "I detest him!" "He shouldn't stir things up here, he should stay in Germany" "But who do you think is paying him?" "I don't know" "Not the French government." "You've been misinformed" "Who do you think it is?" "He crossed the border in a Chinese Embassy car" "They have the right... to decide where they're going." "It's not our style to push them" "The factory is ours, we've done it!" "We're the bosses now!" "They'll negotiate the pay claims they've demanded for years" "I myself went to a number of the unions," "I've been to many strike committees" "And I've seen how the employers are talking to the strikers" "They're scared to death" "And when someone is scared he's ready to give in" "And when someone is ready to surrender you have to act or what good are the fine words and all that?" "It's still just as true that the bourgeoisie will never will never surrender one iota of its power" "So now it's up to you to decide:" "are you for the revolution?" "If you are, how do you go about it?" "Who with?" "Which is the enemy class?" "What class are you?" "Fine, you want reform!" "I ask myself." "What the hell do you need me for?" "I think the students movement and the reforms they demanded are among the most worthy" "But they don't fit in with the demands made by the factories" "We're going through a complicated time" "We've realised that we must take account of two essential factors:" "First, the radicality of the movement is underestimated following the eruption of the students movement" "Second, the leftists' attempt to lead it astray and the attempt of certain elements to take the place of the workers organizations, especially the CGT... aiming to seize leadership of the movement for their own gains" "They launched the movement, they led us in the struggle" "Not by force, but..." "to be frank, they woke us up" "I don't see why during the strikes the unions, whichever they were, called for a strike" "No, that's not true!" "They opposed the strike." "Not one union called a strike!" "The union representatives got together and we said:" ""We must take a decision today, put it to the men immediately"" "That's when three unions, in common accord, said:" ""Let's gather all the men together outside and ask if they want to occupy the factory"" "They gave their approval because..." "They knew it would happen anyway" "It started by itself." "They didn't push the men to strike" "They curbed things when it went too far" "But the government provoked the strike" "Because they were scared" "If a vote of defiance was passed, they knew it would fall on them" "What's more, it implies dealing with the government and being able to govern" "And that's quite difficult" "You must understand that the scale of the movement, the power it represents is bound to throw the government into disarray" "This poses problems for the government though they haven't reacted yet" "Our Social Democrat friends feel there's a vacancy for power" "It's not as simple as all that" "I propose that a temporary government and an interim administration be formed immediately" "Why is it not so simple?" "Why?" "It's not so simple because there must be an alternative" "Now the movement is in favour of economic and social changes" "So we must offer a solution to the working-class:" "a common manifesto of all the parties on the left" "But that doesn't exist" "The left must fulfill its responsibilities without delay" "And agree on a minimal common manifesto for the government... pointing the way to a democratic alternative: a popular government" "Today, for example, the workers are talking about a change in power on the left" "This is the feeling coming from the strike committee they want to go further" "That's why many workers looked further" "Further?" "To start the revolution" "It's a matter of transforming the system of government" "We simply saw a change in social policy, that's all" "They not only want economic change, but political change" "They want both." "They've had enough" "And there's something else now: the longer it lasts... the greater the determination to struggle for a change of policy" "Maybe because the workers might say:" ""No, we want to end this power"" "You can't really tell" "I talk to a lot of workers." "They feel that it's not worth it making demands which the same regime can soon take away" "They want a different political and economic regime" "That's how it feels when I talk to the workers" "I think we must politicize ourselves to excess" "Ourselves as much as the workers!" "There's only one goal, to get rid of the employers!" " How will you sack them?" " Is that the punchline?" " It's the opening line!" " Everything starts here!" "That's the point where life becomes great:" "when there are no more bosses to bugger you" "That's the demand to make" " The bosses don't give a damn!" " Right!" "Let's start with that" "We won't get rid of them with our polling card, that's sure" " It's not by voting..." " We need someone who can govern" "There are piles of them..." "there he is, the boss!" "I'm voting for you!" "The workers committees must run the factories, not the bosses" "The Soviets!" "We'll forget the meaning of the word." "A boss?" "What's that?" "The running of a business, of a factory has become a matter for specialists in the modern world" "People talk about managers' companies and indeed... the person running the factory today is a management technician" "Just like the sales managers, technical managers and so on" "A union representative, however talented isn't going to find himself qualified to give advice straight away" "Advice is always welcome, but... for a decision to carry weight, it must be made by specialists" "So the employer would be an adviser, and not a boss who pockets what we earn" "What do you think of co-management?" "Well, co-management..." "It's either a delusion... or you have to go much further towards a real revolution and go as far as the Communist Party went in Russia, ...after the Revolution" "That is, you must set up revolutionary structures either through the revolution or through a series of reforms revolution being the end result of evolution... the Soviets in the USSR" "And the union system means the actual running of the business" "The major decisions taken by a firm are carried out, or at least controlled, by the workers" "This is something completely new" "I don't think any employers will willingly agree to go as far as that... because it means signing their own redundancy." "It says:" ""I have no role but to provide technical management and then disappear"" "It's impossible for 2 completely different worlds to coexist" "The CGT couldn't see, or more likely, didn't want to see the real nature of the current movement" "But quite clearly, either the words have no meaning at all or we're in the presence of a revolutionary movement" "When we look at what's happening in spite of the Communist Party and the CGT's ban we can honestly say:" ""Anything is possible!"" "The battle is on, and we will see it through to the end, to the only possible solution:" "the socialist revolution!" "The middle-class trusts the Communist Party because it missed out and can go no further" " Why can't it?" " Why what?" "Why can it go no further?" "Because ever since it existed since the war, even before its militants have let the leadership's decisions dictate their thinking" "Stalin really destroyed everything" "Trotsky was right:" "Socialism can't happen in only one country" "Stalin said it can be done" "Experience would prove it has been done" "No, it isn't Socialism in the USSR, far from it" "I think that the capitalist system in the traditional sense of the word and the communist system, or let's say socialist system since the communists themselves say they have a socialist economy and that communism will come once all the problems are solved" "I think these two forms of society are outdated today and what we are witnessing is the gradual setting up of new structures either in a socialist economy or in a liberal economy, let's not say capitalist," "...that might be able to bring about some solutions..." "Even - why not ?" " a coming together of these tendencies" "For instance, in Russia we're now witnessing a complete reversal in the handling of economy" "The reintroduction of profit, competition, etc" "So it isn't contradictory?" "It comes second, you understand" "It's a secondary phase in the evolution of the Soviet economy which is full of lessons." "We can actually see the reintroduction of profit into the doctrine, the economy" "Competition has not only been re-established but has become the driving force for the whole economy" "Moreover, this has been made easier now Soviet economy is at the stage of general consumer goods ...after having resolved with the first 5 year plans or tried to resolve its problems in heavy industry and installation" "When it comes to consumer goods we are forced back into the market economy to the sanction of competition and the reinjection of the notion of profit in the circuit" "The workers must come to a decision about this proposal" "Those who agree, raise your hand" "The strike goes on unanimously!" "Jean-Pierre Bertet, you were at another meeting at the Citroën factory in Paris" "Yes, the strike there goes on" "This morning the workers voted unanimously but for one" "The workers decided not to return to work" "Weren't the aims of the strikes forgotten in that madhouse?" "No." "The aims weren't forgotten, but it was taking place on another level" "A different level to the workers, that is" "They knew trusted mates were talking to the management" "Did the strike committee make clear demands to the employers?" "What were they?" "There are just a few little problems..." "It concerns us." "When the unions take decisions, we want to know" "That's why the men are so rattled" "But nevertheless there was a revolutionary element" "There was something else" "People left our factory without even knowing what wage claims we were making" "They left and the strike took place within union law" "It was put to the vote" "The majority voted for quitting, for striking." "It went very well" "They left as there was a strong move to get rid of De Gaulle, to change things" "Later we talked about lists of demands" "As for the people, they understand very well the Grenelle Report and I mean report as I'm always corrected on this" "Whenever I say contract I'm told it's report." "So report, then" "This Grenelle Report defused the movement" "The middle-classes played their cards well" "They felt trapped, so they made a concession, which was to raise the minimum wage" "So this mass who weren't really prepared for a great political struggle because it had hardly been talked about suddenly found itself with a wage rise quite a substantial rise" "The people involved two to three millions out of nine millions strikers couldn't see why we went further" "They didn't see why we wanted them to go on with the strike ...especially as they felt that NOBODY wanted anything more" "There were elections after the movement" "It was a defeat for us." "Why a defeat?" "A lot of people were afraid" "They got scared" "What did we show them?" "Four or five burned out cars?" "Not many, but four or five an evening even if next day it was the same four" "It got plenty of television coverage" "And there are peaceful guys, who may not be quick when it comes to thinking but who take fright at little things, like snails going back into their shells" "And this scared the pants off them" "What did?" "If anything was threatened in May, it wasn't them but the middle-classes" "It was the owners." "That's clear" "But then they believed that this was anarchy..." "Would there still be food to buy in the shops?" "It's no big deal, but it's important" "What was the impression on France when the TV showed burning cars, Paris in flames?" "Burning cars!" "Wrecking a city!" "Even the Germans - not that I'm for the Germans - but even the Germans avoided destroying Paris" "Now someone comes and destroys it... sets alight the Sorbonne!" "It's abominable!" "They set fire to the Sorbonne, everywhere!" "It's outrageous!" "Béjart" " Vilar" " Salazar" "The Living Theatre's play has been on for three consecutive nights!" "And there's never been any request to ban the play within the cloister of Carmes" "Down with the bourgeois festival!" "END OF PART ONE" "A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT" "Part two SEVERED HANDS" "In Europe, Prague was one of the first victims of Nazi rapacity" "These pictures recount the last days of occupation... when the Czech capital liberated itself, like Paris, in May" "In every country but Germany, the paving stones formed the barricades of freedom" "In Prague, Gestapo archives were thrown in the gutter the swastika flung into the fire" "Our tanks are racing south;" "it's the last raid of the war" "They're approaching the enemy, who are still fighting" "The salvation of Prague depends on their speed" "One hour saved is worth 100,000 lives" "We'll never again feel friendly, towards the USSR!" "It's "Autumn Leaves" - wasted paper" "We've been waiting..." "We've kept faith for 20 years, 100 years... it's too much" "BROTHERS!" " What are you doing to Prague?" " And you a communist!" "Some of what we're going to say will be in contradiction to what many people feel" "Other things will be in contradiction to our own interests" "And still others may represent a serious threat to our country" "In our opinion, the decision taken in Czechoslovakia ...is understandable from a political viewpoint but not from a legal viewpoint" "Because, as far as legality is concerned, it has none at all" "What could justify a solution of this sort?" "A solution which puts every world revolutionary movement ...in a difficult situation" "A solution which has caused real trauma amongst the Czech people" "A solution which has forced an entire nation to undergo such a bitter ordeal:" "occupation by foreign armies albeit armies of a socialist country" "A solution which puts millions of citizens under a tragic obligation to choose between passivity in the face of this predicament which is reminiscent of other, older situations of fighting side by side with the pro-American agents with the enemies of Socialism, with the West German spies," "the fascist and reactionary scum who will exploit it to assume the colours of independence of patriotism, and of Czech liberty" "But the main issue, like it or not, is this:" "can the socialist camp allow the development of a political situation... which would mean the isolation of a socialist country forcing it into the arms of imperialism?" "In our opinion, it cannot allow it" "And the socialist camp has every right to prevent this" "The French Communist Party declared its opposition to the intervention and its position is unchanged" "It restated it during our 19th Congress" "I can summarize the reasons for this stance in three points" "In January 1968, the Czech Communist Party came out in favour of economic change in the country to implement a genuine socialist democracy while in no way affecting internal affairs" "We deemed this outlook to be valid and we supported it" "Nevertheless, it's evident that in a country like Czechoslovakia, hardly 25 years old as a socialist country, there's a need to fight all forces hostile to Socialism" "But as always, we believed... that the Czech Communist Party, the Czech democratic workers were strong enough to resolve this problem themselves" "The 1917 Party used to practice freedom of thought, talk between fractions all of which has occurred whilst it has seized power" "Only much later, after the victory did they codify this internal clash of opinions in the Party as impossible" "But the party which seized power was not the model imposed throughout the world" "Such a party would be expelled today from the communist workers' movement... for the same reasons that those who tried to resume the struggle ...are kept out of the Czech Communist Party" "Emil Zatopek" "After 30 years in the Czech party what made you place yourself in the service of imperialism and lead the conspiracy against the People's Republic?" "To explain, I must say a few words about my background" "I did take part in the workers movement" "But I come from a middle-class background" "My father was a village shopkeeper..." "I was struck by the questions I was asked by the answers they tried to force out of me, identical to the questions I'd read during the Raik trial and after the Kostov trial" "Afterward, I recalled the Moscow trials when we'd been so disturbed to see Lenin's companions on the bench of infamy" "We couldn't understand it then, and we were disturbed" "These things came back to me" "And I realised that the trial, the drama I'd taken part in... was a repetition of the trials that had taken place in Moscow" "It was all part of a whole" "Part of something inherent in the Stalinist system since the 30s" "Doesn't using the Stalinist label risk isolating the phenomenon historically restricting it to a set of historical, social and geographical circumstances of one specific country and era?" "Or is it a permanent danger one must fight against every minute?" "It is a permanent danger, which is all the greater because it has not yet been closely examined" "Stalinism has been a serious distortion of socialism" "A distortion which has had some extremely painful consequences, for the Soviet people, and for communists all over the world" "The term is ambiguous because it allows you to believe that this phenomenon is tied to one man, or to a group of men" "Or perhaps to a social situation of regression and encirclement" "So once a certain type of ruler has vanished from the scene and a certain type of regression and encirclement has vanished these phenomena will never reoccur" "But experience shows that this is not quite true" "And this was the case in Czechoslovakia:" "a developed country... a country with a working-class and an old democratic tradition ...with a long tradition of struggles of various sorts with a communist party which genuinely existed... free from outside interference or orders from abroad" "It was still possible to impose a model which, to simplify, we call Stalinist" "So, as well as the historical, geographical and economic reasons for this... we must seek out a contributory reason, to use the modern term, ...which would over-determine all the others" "I believe that it is within the state machinery within the functioning of the state and the party that we will find the clue to this over-determination" "The French Communist Party, from 1944 to 1953, has been unquestionably Stalinist" "We were all Stalinists, that's a fact" "Thousands of French communists were Stalinists in those days" "But I believe we have to define the nature of our Stalinism" "Firstly, Stalinism took the Soviet Union as the premier socialist state" "And it defended and built socialism in appalling conditions" "In times of crisis and action, it can be simply black or white" "At such times critical attitudes can stall the necessary action" "However it's vital that we don't come to accept this as the norm" "Destroying the element of criticism always backfires and harms the cause which is being so selflessly defended" "In the tradition of communist and working-class movements there is a long-standing distortion which compares all political action with military action" "In an army set-up, action passes from the command to the troops" "The rank and file are there only to receive and carry out orders" "They should never be involved in discussions of strategy" "It is hard to imagine an army taking a democratic vote on decisions taken by the command or by headquarters" "It is inconceivable, for better or for worse" "So, in the sphere of politics any reproduction of the military model damages political action" "Mass political action can only be realised... if there's a constant dialectic and disruption between base and summit of the political pyramid ...and a constant evolution of new relations" "The initiative taken by the base, the masses, or the army must act as the driving force for decision-makers at any level:" "unions, committee level, at the level of workers democracy ...so that new ideas are constantly received and fed back" "9th congress, Chinese Communist Party," "April 1st, 1969" "Chairman Mao... and his close comrade in arms." "Lin Piao, mount the rostrum" "The crowd applauds" "Long live Chairman Mao!" "LETTER TO SOMEONE" "I saw him again at the end of June and he was a different man" "He was drained and obviously uncertain about the future though he'd won the fight after May 30th..." "General de Gaulle had been deeply affected by these events" "And many loyal supporters were thinking of abandoning him" "He had become an onerous figure, and finally they did abandon him" "The Left jolted de Gaulle during the events of May/June and the Right overthrew him in April" "An analysis of the referendum results is quite clear on this" "Today, April 23rd, it is no longer the legal arguments which will determine the outcome of 10,000 votes" "As in so many other cases "Yes" is only a vote of confidence in de Gaulle" ""No" is no more than a desire for his departure" "In answer to the single question... which seeks my approval of the entire bill in one single answer as far as I am concerned, regretful, but definitively..." "I will not approve it" "I'm fairly sure the majority answer will be "No"" "But going by what people say?" "They're fed up with his attitude the way he threatens to go at the first disagreement" "Let him go, then!" "Life will go on without him" "Anyway, he could die from one day to the next, and he'd have to be replaced" "We're only human" "My husband nearly died a while ago..." "I wasn't about to die with him or kill myself" "One must go on" "M. Mitterrand, right up until the end of the May crisis your public image was based on you as the successor to the Gaullist régime" "How do you wish to present yourself now to the public?" "What is your platform in the campaign for the referendum?" "I would like to point out that as far as I know I'm here as a guest of R.T.L." "But I will answer your question" "It wasn't put in the same terms as posed by Broussine" "He wondered if you were running for the presidential elections" "Rushing ahead a bit, aren't you?" "Does a government of an alliance of the left seem feasible?" "It should be possible..." "if everyone is willing" "Gentlemen!" "M. Mitterrand has the floor to conclude, it's getting late..." "I must ask you not to interrupt at all" "I have already said it in public, and very recently so this is not an improvised answer" "It seemed absurd to imagine that in our French country for we can have a French-style socialism we can have socialist appropriation of the means of production and exchange" "Or that we'll make French agriculture similar to Kolkhozs" "Or even conceive of nationalizing and collectivizing ...all French industry..." "I've always said that you have to combine your program with market laws which in the economic sector implies the laws of profit" "In collective appropriation, one can't ignore laws of profit" "So don't put words into my mouth" "After fifty years of different socialist experiences we're not going to repeat mistakes which may have been unavoidable in the past" "Let's pursue only the successful achievements" "We are stuck in this vicious circle" "We demand a little improvement in our live" "But we give power to those who prevent us from living in a worthy fashion" "A man said: "Vote as red as you like, it'll always fade in time"" "If you assume that the Communist Party is the stronger party the better structured and organized party, in which the worker feels secure then we must know if he'll ally with those to his right" "The Socialist Party, then the middle-classes, then who knows?" "Union and unity is the only path towards change" "Some people still remember..." "Anyway, I remember..." "Two years in Algeria under Guy Mollet means something" "For me it's over!" "So I told him:" ""The problem is not Guy Mollet" ""The problem is to win the common struggle" ""of communist workers, socialist workers and all democrats"" "I said: "If you know an easier way, let me know." "I'm easy" ""I'm ready to follow..." "but there is NO other way!"" "Come and get your Popular Front T-shirts here!" "Contribute to the success of the Popular Front" "Buy the manifesto!" "The alliance of Communists, Socialists and Left Radicals..." "Our goal is to transform society" "We must take the majority of the people with us in the democratic and revolutionary struggle" "The problem of democracy is fundamental to the development of socialism" "I explained in "History of the Stalinist Phenomenon" that Lenin underestimated the democratic phenomenon" "Do you renounce the concept of proletarian dictatorship?" "Perhaps not the concept, because that's very theoretical" "It does not have any practical value" "Did Lenin think so?" "Perhaps Lenin did, but Marx did not" "For Marx it was a concept against bourgeois dictatorship" "It was different for Lenin" "He led a party which seized power by violent revolution, and held power by force" "So he assimilated the theory of dictatorship of the masses and the practical, dictatorial means of running the State" "That is why, in the Soviet constitution of 1918 a worker's voice was worth 25.000 peasant voices" "That is why other parties were banned, why there was no freedom of the press, association, information" "So there was a theoretical slide which was harmful" "It clouded the reality of democratic development which socialism in countries like ours needed" "What is essential is our concept of freedom without sectarianism, which makes us so different" "Freedom seeking only to free man from exploitation" "The Communist Party has moved from a monopoly of orthodoxy to heterodoxy" "So the only good critique of Stalinism comes from within the Communist Party" "Inevitably we do collide, though not in a fighting sense" "We come across other works" "Debate is inevitable as we work in the same area and from a similar set of working principles" "Nothing can stop such confrontations from deepening and getting richer" "The question of political line is another matter" "Confusion is bound to arise, often caused by the Communists" "Some of them still confuse issues" "There is confusion outside and inside the party concerning the actual political line... and the area of debate and Marxist research and discussion" "I think it has to take place on two different levels" "They're protected by the cops." "Don't fall into the trap" "We have often seen this happening at the company gates" "We deplore it, but we must speak out in order to show that we won't lower the flag before Stalinism" "We defend our political line and the workers' gains" "We defend the gains of the 1917 Revolution which Stalinism and bureaucracy..." "Down with fascism!" "Fascism won't succeed!" "Workers' democracy!" "Prague, Jan 25th 1969" "Funeral of Jack Palach" "I don't think it was suicide." "Suicide is a personal solution" "I see no way out, so I commit suicide" "This is another matter altogether" "He killed himself for everyone else not for himself" "He showed a courage which none of us shares" "Because now we feel guilty for not having acted in time" "We could have negotiated with somebody, or..." "I think this entire funeral procession is one of guilt" "Greeting to our French audience from Persepolis" "France has tuned in" "The first picture showed their Majesties, the Shah and his wife welcoming illustrious guests, kings, princes, heads of state" "They gather at Persepolis, the ancient Versailles!" "What a sight!" "The Shahbanou of Iran with Mr. Podgorny, the Soviet president" "There's Marshall Tito and Madame Tito" "Heads of State representing most of the nations on earth are here" "Never before have so many crowned heads and heads of state been united" "Meanwhile two h-e-r-a-I-d-s approach to announce the start of the festivities" "The heralds come to inform his Imperial Majesty the Shah-in-shah Arya-Mehr, "the Shining Light of the Aryans"" "...that the festivities are ready and the procession of 25 centuries about to begin!" "Wanted:" "UIrike Meinhof, from the "Baader Gang"" "If you become involved in a movement in any country you risk not only suppression but death" "If you think of becoming a revolutionary you should remember, though it's not a cheerful thought that you could find yourself any day..." "Ben Barka" "Miguel Enriquez" "He became mad" "I could do nothing but look on and watch him growl and struggle" "He banged against everything" "He wouldn't let me change his dressings" "You're a father too!" "You understand what that means?" "You and I are parents" "Do you understand this?" "Can you imagine how I feel?" "Stop smiling!" "Parents care for their children, children care for their parents!" "We are old and without children now!" "It's all over" "1973, "Watergate" hearings" "Arthur Penn" "The same people who united before to protest about the Vietnam War ...are now saying we should do something else at the same time" "Sometimes you have to look inside yourself" "You must find good vibrations, live in harmony with others in order to be at peace in the world... at peace with the environment, the inner, inter-personal world" "In the field of current affairs there are no more street demos" "You don't see fists raised in the air in political protest" "But the struggle goes on" "People participate even more, in their own way" "They know how to work together" "This doesn't mean meetings from morning until midnight talking about Marx, Lenin and Mao, doing nothing" "Now people work together better than before" "That is something..." "It was terrible before" "The famous and much cited movement of the sixties might have achieved something" "But it had no knowledge of methods of work which could have led to a very efficient job being done" "October 1967, March on the Pentagon" "Admiral Mohr on the air" "At the time everyone knew it was only a beginning" "Even if at one stage it seemed as though as though there was a kind of revolutionary euphoria" "It was wrong, it was tragic, but it was still a great moment" "People said that the U.S. of 68/69 was Russia of 1905" "We have twelve years to see if that's true" "The state of guerrilla warfare today can be summed up by saying it is a process of recuperation from a long and painful struggle and from the problems met in the last few years" "We think the origins of this crisis stem from the following:" "At the beginning of the struggle the movement applied insurrectionist tactics" "We wanted to have revolution in Venezuela based on the model of the Russian revolution" "An uprising lasting a few days, in the largest cities" "Later the Venezuelan movement committed a grave error, to a lesser degree than other Latin American countries, maybe but it was still an error" "It applied the concept of leading home which is exposed" "by the philosopher and journalist Régis Debray in his book "Revolution within the Revolution"" "There is no doubt that revolution is expensive" " Do you think it will continue?" " Of course!" "Maybe in other forms but... it'll always be the same struggle at least in Latin America" "You don't think the decade to come will differ from the last?" "Of course it will!" "It'll be another decade" "But the revolutionary struggle will continue in whatever form any country or nation will devise, specific to each country's tradition and identity" "They will be as dramatic and difficult as the ones in the past" "My work is not of a particular nature" "I would like it to be a fragment of a broader action" "At the moment I am not active so the question has no point" "I was in Cuba on January 20th 1959" "It was a very odd time" "There was a sort of procession led by 200 Miami police, with the mayor in an open car" "...accompanied I believe, by the mayor of Havana" "The next day I was about to return to Chile when I met Carlos Rafael Rodriguez" ""What are you doing here?"" ""I came to see the revolution but since there isn't any..."" "He said:" ""You're wrong, Salvador" ""Stay here and speak to the leaders"" "He took me to meet Raul Castro" "And I saw Fidel right away" "We walked into a room where peasants were playing chess on the floor" "Machine guns everywhere..." "I've got the photograph somewhere" "We sat where we could beside a sort of chimney" "And then we sat and talked together" "He impressed me at once with his exuberant intelligence and force ...which surges forward like a human waterfall" "Béchamel sauce, five layers, meat... 30 minutes in the oven, moderate heat" "I almost forgot, on top of the béchamel - the cheese!" "Long live proletarian internationalism!" "Long live friendship between the Soviet and Cuban nations!" "Long live the Soviet Union!" "The time will come when the revolution, which is a dynamic process which destroys the old and builds the new will become an institution" "We are not eternal" "This time in which the revolution lives is not eternal" "A day will come when all that the revolution has created will become institutional" "When this profound and true democracy will also create new forms" "Apart from this, we have an election every month, but in public" "Now, we only have to ask:" "Is anyone against it?" "Is anyone abstaining?" "So, a unanimous vote for the resolutions of Congress!" "Everything comes down to the party" "It synthesizes revolutionary dreams throughout history" "It gives concrete form to the ideas and forces of revolution" "It absorbs our individualism" "It teaches us to think in terms of collectivism" "It's our instructor, our master, our guide and our watchful conscience when we're unable to see our own mistakes, our faults and our limitations" "The example of Cuba will not be repeated" "Marx has already said:" "history does not repeat itself" "When it does it takes the form of a tragic comedy" "After the victory of the Cuban revolution imperialism became alarmed" "It built within our country an anti-guerrilla force which is very difficult to overcome" "Mr Wallander, Pentagon" "This is why the Chilean way where the revolution is prepared by the whole people is far less vulnerable in the face of imperialist aggression" "Its results are far more effective than the heroism of a few young people fighting on the mountains, or in the town" "The government of popular unity that will seize power in Chile ...that must take place in Chile with the appointment of Allende to the Presidency is not in itself a government of Marxist allegiance" "It is a government of coalition" "It will consist of communists, socialists and radicals" "As for us, we consider that the Chilean experience confirms the thesis of the French Communist Party" "The thesis that the alliance of the parties on the left on a clear manifesto, with a clear program can allow the formation of a popular union strong enough to beat the middle-classes" "I must point out that since Salvador Allende's success a certain number of democrats including some Christian Democrats who initially felt reticent towards the Popular Unity ...are now lending their support:" "a full confirmation of the communists' argument" "The union of the parties and forces of the left is capable of launching in any country and I believe this applies to us, too a majority movement capable of defeating the middle-class!" "We salute the Chilean experience" "Moreover, let me say this:" "Since this experience is very dangerous for capitalism ...there is a chance of pressure, if not intervention especially from American imperialism" "I am sure that should such intervention occur in Chile the French Communist Party with the other parties of the left will know how to bring the full support of the French democrats ...to our Chilean comrades" "I told you what I had seen, the good and the bad" "It will be similar over there" "I see we have reporters here, Chilean and foreign... very good!" "Let them stay, especially the foreign press" "They can bear witness that we have here a true democracy which is lacking in countries who talk so much about it" "I've spent two days here and I've seen positive sides and negative sides" "Negative sides:" "There's no direct participation of the workers" "A grave mistake!" "This must be rectified" "One of the basic principles of the committees of production is ...that each comrade, man or woman, wherever he works... must know his task as well as the task of his entire section ...within a Program which must be analyzed and criticized" "...in local reunions and then in general assemblies on Sundays... or on Saturday afternoons." "Did you get that?" "When so few go to the meetings to study the factory's Program" "This shows a lack of political consciousness" "The process of change towards a new society..." "What does it rest on?" "On the workers!" "On production!" "On productivity!" "The worker who participates understands that before he was just a machine..." "Or even less" "Now he's a person who realizes the factory belongs to him... because it belongs to the people and he's one of the people" "So it's very disappointing that some workers could steal from their own industry" "From a factory that is yours!" "But I've seen your contempt for slack workers who are paid as if they work well" "And I'm happy that it was spoken out" "There cannot be any bonus for laziness" "Nor can there be free gifts for negligence" "No political label can protect the incompetent" "The party card does not bestow titles or honors" "Each one must earn his right to be respected!" "Some comrades insistently asked for an end to wage restrain" "We believe that this cannot be done" "No, I didn't come here to be hissed or cheered" "I've just come to talk sense to you" "This cannot be done" "Because if we were to do it in the textile industry..." "If at Sumar wages went up by 47 percent in other factories it would be more than 200 percent" "How high would we have to raise prices?" "We cannot pursue wages readjustment" "Not unless we obtain in exchange an increase in production" "Otherwise, inflation will cripple the lot of us" "Would it be acceptable to hear you say: "A rise or a strike"?" "Would it be fair?" "No!" "Would it be effective?" "No!" "Would I send the police in to make you work?" "No!" "Would I fire at the workers?" "No!" "I must talk to you, explain things to you make you understand" "And if reason isn't enough, nor moral force I will have nothing better to do but go, what else?" "Twiddle my thumbs while this country sinks into an inflationary spiral if no radical measures are taken?" "It cannot be done" "In fact, we've all the disadvantages of a capitalist régime and none of the advantages of socialism" "We're stuck in the middle..." "like sandwiches" "I was saying yesterday to my friends:" ""Isn't it a dramatic life?" ""To move around only between two cars, for security measures" ""It seems there are some who are disturbed by my good health"" "I have come here to tell this brotherly people what happened in the Presidential Palace on the morning of September 11th" "On this day of solidarity I wish to tell you what my father asked me to convey to you when we were under the bombardment:" ""Tell Fidel that I will do my duty"" "From this free territory of America, we can answer the comrade-president:" "your people will not waver!" "They will not let down the revolution flag" "The struggle against fascism has begun..." "It will only end with a free, independent, socialist Chile for which you gave your life" "Dear comrade-president, we will overcome!" "Two people impressed me greatly among many other things, by their eyes:" "Chou En Lai and Che Guevara" "Both had an inner force" "They had great resolution, as well as great irony" "Paris, May 1 st, 1977" "I was lucky." "One was dragged by her hair." "A woman aged 40..." "Many comrades were tortured in jail..." "Mostly internal tortures..." "Truncheons in the vagina, electrodes..." "They always talk about repression but it's a war." "A different war, a war of selective elimination." "For the fourth time the exhibition of land weaponry ...was held in Satory to promote the export of the latest developments in armaments" "The true authors of this film, although they have not all been informed about the use we have made of their documents, are the numerous cameramen, recordists, witnesses and activists whose work is constantly opposed to the Powers" "who wish we had no memory." "English version produced by Lucia Films, London Iskra Films, Paris" "VOICES:" "Jim Broadbent Charlotte Cornwell Robert Kramer"