La Commune Paris 1871 (FR, 2000) [engl. subtitles]

 

La Commune. Directed By Peter Watkins (5hrs 46mins). La Commune is Watkins’s anarchist masterpiece. He made it in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Paris, with a cast of more than 200 participants who re-created the six-week experiment in socialist self-government of 1871. In this war drama blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, the working class and the bourgeoisie of 19th century Paris are interviewed and covered on television, before and during a working class revolt. Most came to the project as activists, not actors, with a pre-commitment to Watkins’s own utopianism and his desire to bring contemporary capitalist society and media to account.