Events
English / Deutsch

28.5.2008 | BABYLON, Berlin

Night Screening Event of La Commune by Peter Watkins

With members of Rebond pour la Commune

In 1871, the Paris population rose against the reactionary French regime and elected a workers’ Commune that proclaimed, among other things, the separation of State and Church as well as free and compulsory education for all children. Seventy-two days later, on May 28, 1871, the revolution was crushed by the regular army, which massacred 30,000 people in the streets of Paris. The Paris Commune was not only an important working class uprising against the injustices and social ills of its time, it was also a largescale experience in direct democracy. For the film La Commune (Paris 1871) (1999) by Peter Watkins, the preparation, shooting process, and alternative distribution attempted to tackle revolutionary form and process by unleashing liberating forces in a collective audio-visual project involving the participation of "ordinary" citizens as well as the marginalized communities of our "modern and developed" societies (sans papiers, homeless, jobless, etc.). Rebond pour la Commune, a group of actors and technicians who managed to survive the film, invite you to a Commune Night to prolong and develop the process of participation and free speech around the questions raised by the Commune and Peter Watkins’s film. Through discussions, a screening of the epic film, live performances, food, and drinks, the communard spirit is kept alive and celebrates acts of resistance past, present, and to come.

With a performance by the Worker and Veteran Choir, Neukölln.