All language subtitles for A Grin Without a Cat (1977) English WEBDL-1080p.en

A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT

I'm not among those who saw "Potemkin"
when it first came out; I was too young.

But I remember clearly
the shot of the meat,

with the maggots.

And the small tent where the dead lay...

and in front of which the first man stops...

And when the other sailors
take aim at the battleship's bridge.

And, when the officer gives
the order to fire,

A tall sailor with a big
moustache shouts out a word...

that covers the entire screen in big letters:

BROTHERS!

First Part
THE FRAGILE HANDS

Irina, do you come often to these
stairs with tourists?

Yes, very often. Sometimes,
two or three times on the same day,

because I worked for a year
as a translator for tourists in Odessa.

(Jorge Semprún)
In the sixties, everything changed.

We were coming out of the Cold War...

and the Revolution of 1917
belonged in the museums.

The most brilliant minds held that, at last, we'd reached the Age of Reason.

And the only problem left
was to find out when and how...

humanity would reach
a universal standard of civilization.

And then everything came down...

in Cuba, China...

But, if we had to put it in one word
that would evidently be Vietnam.

FROM VIETNAM TO
THE DEATH OF THE CHE

(An American pilot speaks to the camera)

(Paul Vergés)
The war in Vietnam in the '60s and '70s...

was the Spanish Civil War
of today,

is the Spanish Civil War of today.

But the Spanish Civil War at
that time,

a war in whose context was...

the treason of Western Democracies,

was a lost cause.

It was a cause that allowed for
mobilization, crystallization,

and observation.

But, objectively, a lost cause.

On the other hand, the war in Vietnam is
the Spanish Civil War of our days...

but with the possibility of
defeating imperialism...

in a specific spot of the globe.

It wasn't a real mutiny, but a simulated one.

It was, like everything else in
these camps, a spectacle.

A complete repertoire of anti-subversive
techniques. One big game.

There were visitors from all over the world,
specially Latin America.

Who were as in a car showroom,

to see the new models,
the latest technology,

to study, compare and buy
the latest anti-subversive tools.

(Vietnam, 1968)

A loudspeaker plays out the supposed
last words of a Vietcong who died in battle.

His family calls him, but he says:
"It's too late. I'm dead".

And urges his comrades to abandon
the jungle before they die like him.

(Vietnam, 1966)

(Washington DC, 1965)

(Wall Street Executives)

(Paul Vergès)
Vietnam was, and still is,

the only question that can
mobilise the masses...

in Sweden as in Paris,

in the United States and in Moscow,

in Beijing or New Delhi, or Algiers.

That is to say, never before has History put a nation...

in such a convergence point
of all the world's contradictions.

And it is beginning with the
conflict in Vietnam...

that people in the world
felt concerned,

implicated in this struggle for
independence, socialism,

in this struggle for peace.

Today everyone is concerned
about the Vietnamese.

And what, from our perspective,
is exemplary...

is the modesty of the Vietnamese people,
and their realism.

It's a people that,
under the direction of their Party,

makes no reproaches,
shows no bitterness.

But who don't make up any illusions, either.

A people that believes in its own strength.

And, as far as the Vietnamese people
are concerned,

there's no doubt that, for an intelligent
and realist spirit,

taking the decision of liberating Vietnam...

facing the American involvement...

was, obviously, madness.

(Simone Signoret)
We couldn't believe it.

The slogan then was: "Peace in Vietnam".

Just like "Stop the massacres".

A tiny nation, threatened by a giant.

A nation we had to rescue.

(Paris, 1967)
The idea they could win came much later.

After all, don't forget that
"Victory for the Vietcong"...

was a left-wing slogan then.

We never thought that Vietnam could be for the USA...

what Indochina had been for France.

(Paul Cèbe)
I was 18 when I went to Indochina,
and 20 when I came back to France.

In Indochina I learned a lot
from my militant comrades.

In Indochina I met many
"Republican fighters".

They were communist officers,
they are all dead now.

I was sent to Indochina...

to fight the "Yellow danger",
naturally.

Later, I learned it wasn't fair to
fight the "Yellow danger"...

and then I met these
republican officers.

I collaborated with them and
then I discovered books!

I discovered people called Jaurès,

called Lenin, etc.

Well, I came back.

And I realised that the people
who worked in factories,

though they couldn't explain it clearly,

were much like the militants
I'd met in Indochina.

And I realised that these problems
that had to be solved,

the problems that had caught my eye,

that they could only be solved by these people.

The workers.

(Saint- Nazaire, May 1st 1967.
End of the longest strike of the post-war in Sud-Aviation)

I'm sure you will celebrate our victory...

going home with a common purpose,
as when you left it.

You must be united for
the everyday struggle of tomorrow...

and for future confrontations,
for the fight will be long and hard.

Strengthen your unions and work for their unity,

for there cannot be a strong working class...

without powerful unions.

The power of the unions must surpass...

the combined power of the bosses
and the government.

But how did you live through
these two months?

(Georges Frischmann, CGT)
We lived through...
The fishermen helped us, so we had fish.

We queued up for the fish, like
in the war, for bread.

Good... I mean, bad memories.

It was a hard time, but we
had this kind of...

A 60 or 62 year old man told me:
"In these last 2 months I felt alive again".

(Lescure, CGT delegate)
People who had never striked for an hour...

did it for two months.

They saw they could live without many things...

they'd considered necessary until then...

that these things were not essential...

that the essential thing was their human dignity.

It won't end here.

We'll hear about it for a long time.

We'll say: Remember '67?

We feel we had a real movement...

Our elders say that '36 was
a different thing.

We'll tell them: "67 wasn't too bad, either".

(Berlin, June 2, 1967)

(Extract of a militant film made by Berlin's Free University students)

Iran's Shah, murderer of the journalist Shirazi,

and the ministers Faterni and Lofti,

of 71 opposition officers,

of hundreds of communists,
civilians and students...

I was at the June 2nd events.

The Shah was in Berlin. The students
demonstrated against him.

And a student was killed.

This man who earns 400 million dollars...

while his subjects starve to death...

is welcomed by West Germany.

We moved towards the Shah
and he moved towards us.

An unit of Iranian secret police
faces the demonstrators.

The most scary thing was...

(Doctor Scherberwen, father of the student)
when some 12 students...

armed with chains and bats
came towards us...

swinging at everything.

Someone raised a bat over me...

and everyone thought: "They are going
to smash the old man's head".

Someone pulled me and I fell.

We faced the edge of the organised violence
of the system...

This reveals the inherent
weakness of our actions.

(Rudi Dutschke)

They aren't organised.
No one controls them.

They are spontaneously made
by the demonstrators.

The fact that they aren't organised...

is good, but it's also very dangerous.

The organised counter-violence
can crush us, like it did on June 2.

(Daniel Cohn-Bendit)
Germany was a stimulus. Why?

Because German students showed
us it was possible...

to make not only corporative demands
from the university...

but also to ask radical
questions about society...

which could lead to radical
transformations of society.

In this way Germany was indeed
a stimulus.

But the situation here is very
different.

I think it is important to underline the specific
aspects of the situation in France.

In France there is a Communist Party.

In France there is an opposition
which doesn't exist in Germany.

On April 11, 1968, Rudi was gravely wounded by gunfire...

while he cycled in a Berlin street.

He'd written: "We must revolutionise revolutionaries".

A key phrase of the '60s.

(La Paz, Bolivia, June 1967)

I saw in the walls of La Paz
slogans like "¡Viva Fidel!",

hammers and sickles,

as well as posters which asked for the capital...

punishment for Régis Debray,
a guerrilla theoretician,

we knew he was French,
that he was a philosopher...

and that he'd published a book in Maspero titled: "Revolution in the revolution?".

I don't think my book will have much echo.

It would be great if they published it.

And if I didn't publish books I wouldn't be an editor;...

I would be at the Marxist Studies
Institute to define all the concepts,

in a scientific and theoretical way, that,
once the concepts were defined,

we'd use them in books of such perfection...

that all we'd need was for them
to be published to have the Revolution done.

(Black Panthers rally, San Francisco)

There was a profound impression, first of all,

that finally this generation was living its 1917,

that it was finally into
something important.

And this something was the Cultural Revolution,

which aimed to flood the institutions...

and even the Party with a wave...

that would have been seen
as counter-revolutionary...

had it not been personally
approved by Mao.

(Paris, 1962 - Metro Charonne)

And also a new attitude in the
demonstrations, more aggressive,

born from a real need of
striking back,

contrary to what had happened at Charonne,
where there was no response.

Moreover, there was the question of space.

The police lines represented a
kind of order.

The union and student lines another.

And between the two, a space.
A space which had to be filled.

At that moment, anyone in that space...

could only be considered
an alien provocateur.

And maybe they were, after all.

But it made for a new kind of confrontation.

Amidst ourselves, to start with.

When, in October 1967, a protest
was broken up by the fights between...

the pro-communists and the pro-Chinese,
as they were called then,

it wasn't normal. It was something new.

It had a new meaning. And the shouts
for "Unity, unity!"...

from the crowd, meant something too.

And this is where this "New Left" was born.

Maybe what didn't get much attention then
was the rising of the "New Right".

In 1967 Giscard D'Estaing asked me if I'd accept...

taking part of political action with him.

And, more particularly, of organising...

the new United and Independent Republicans Party.

At that time we used to think their
strategies were quite poor.

Today, looking back, we see that indeed they were.

I hope that being off key in music...

will allow me not be so in politics.

On March 13, 1967,

While the workers at Rhodia invented
a new way of striking by occupying.

Fidel Castro announces his rupture with
the Latin American orthodox Communist Parties.

Revolution in the revolution.

There are those...

who call themselves revolutionaries...

and, yet, are against the revolutionary movement.

They demoralise the peoples.

They exploit any setbacks...

to discredit the revolutionary struggle...

against imperialism.

Instead of instilling in people...

a sense of struggle, of the duty,

of the sacred obligation to fight,

they sow the seeds of discouragement.

They support those who are against the guerrilla.

They support those who desert the guerrilla

We have the example of...

Venezuela, where the rightist,
reactionary direction...

of the Communist Party...

has betrayed the guerrilleros...

abandoning them in the mountains.

It has betrayed the very men...

who hold the flag of the revolutionary
struggle and who are still fighting.

(1963, Falcon Mountain)

This interview was recorded in 1963,
before the general elections.

(Douglas Bravo)
It is usually said...

that there is a struggle...

between the opposition and the government.

We go much further:

We hold that it's not a struggle between
the opposition and the government,

it's a struggle between rich and poor.

Apparently, the rich won.

At the last moment, the left called
for abstention, but was ignored.

The right won with Leoni,
and that was the breaking point.

It led to a refoundation movement by the CP and some elements of the extreme left.

The rest, back to the armed struggle,
backed by Cuba.

Little after, Douglas was expelled from the party.

And both lines insisted in hating themselves mutually.

Here, nothing is like China, except, maybe, the greatest heresy:

The Party is no longer the sole expression of the vanguard.

It can be questioned and overruled.

It's not that the Communist Party is
systematically opposed to the armed struggle,

like the extreme left is anxious to proclaim,

but the question is: who leads,
the Party of the guerrilla?

The Cuban answer, that of Douglas
and of Che's,

that of Revolution in the Revolution, is unequivocal.

Political and military unity
under the guerrilla.

This would become incarnated...

in the theories of 'Foquism'.

This can explain what would
happen years later in Bolivia.

But it was there, in Venezuela,
where this split was born...

in the Latin American
revolutionary movement...

which transformed the guerrilla
in a spearhead without a spear.

Sure, the greatest
flaw in the guerrilla...

has been it's lack of experience
and that is only acquired with time.

Naturally some Latin Americans
who don't lack it...

such is the case of
Commander Ernesto Guevara.

I haven't the smallest doubt that:
any country,

any guerrilla front,

which benefits of the cooperation
of Commander Ernesto Guevara,

will follow strictly...

the principles of guerrilla warfare.

And it will be such a good example
to show how when you apply

the technique, the art of the
guerrilla, properly...

there can be no defeat.

I had an interview with Fidel...

(Mario Monje, general secretary of
the Bolivian Communist Party)
on February, '66.

Che was no longer in Cuba...

but I could imagine where he was...

or at least where he had left from.

Then I learned that he had...

left for Congo after his...

spectacular farewell...

and that letter...

which everyone knows.

Fidel,

on this moment I remember many things:...

our meeting at Maria Antonia's,

your invitation to join with you,

and all the tension of the preparations.

One day, they went around asking...

who should be contacted in case of death...

and the real possibility of it...

was a blow to us all.

Later we'd know that it was true.

That in a Revolution one either wins or dies.

- if it is a true revolution -...

I feel I've carried out the duty...

which tied me to the Cuban Revolution and its land...

and I say farewell to you,

to my comrades, and to your people, which is mine too.

My only grave mistake was...

not to trust you fully...

from the start, at the Sierra Maestra...

and not to have understood rapidly enough...

your qualities of revolutionary and leader.

I've lived through great days.

And felt by your side the pride
of belonging to our people...

in the sad and bright days of the
Missile Crisis.

Other lands in the world...

demand the help of my modest efforts.

(Paul Seban)
What do you see in Che Guevara. An ideological guide?

No. If I had to name an
ideological guide...

that would be Marx.

Isn't Marx a bit obsolete.?

I don't think he's obsolete.

Like Sta... Lenin isn't either.

Today, like in the times of Marx, there are people...

who don't have any education,
who suffer,

who starve, etc.

The systematic exploitation continues,
always the same.

I think that... no.
Marx isn't obsolete.

(Caracas, Venezuela)

And it has to be said, that a factor...

has contributed...

to this lack...

of political culture:

And it has been, not the use,

but the abuse of the manuals...

of Marxism-Leninism.

It has to be said that there
is much of clichés,

of stereotyped slogans,

and even, though it's not our
intent to go into...

the analysis of manuals,

some blatant lies!

It is often considered that
the revolutionaries...

are only the members of a Party...

or of a sect,

and we believe there are many revolutionaries...

among the youth...

and among the people without a Party...

New people, who disagree with the
lukewarm,

weak, pseudo-revolutionary positions...

held by some...

who call themselves revolutionaries.

Because when once or twice...

they mentioned...

the famous intercontinental missiles,

everyone here started talking about them...

and counted on them.

As though they had them in their pockets.

That creates, so we see,

an accommodated mentality...

the idea that "we are protected,

let's cross our arms".

When, really, the only correct,
intelligent,

truly revolutionary thing to do...

is to think only in ourselves.

Count on our own strength,

and never relax in our efforts,

so that should the day come we need...

to face direct aggression...

from our imperialist enemies,

we can think first of ourselves...

and only of ourselves,

and be ever-ready to sell
dear our lives...

without counting on anyone to defend us.

There's a terrible reality.

Vietnam incarnates the hopes of victory...

of an entire world, forgotten
and, tragically, alone.

(Message of Che Guevara to the Tricontinental,
May, 1967)

Solidarity with the people of Vietnam...

is like the public's support to the gladiators in Rome.

It's not that you wish well the victim of aggression, but that you share her faith,

you are with her in death or victory.

If we analyse the loneliness of Vietnam...

we will feel the anguish of
this illogical moment for humanity.

American imperialism is responsible for the aggression.

Its immense crimes cover the globe,
as we know only too well.

But there are others who are guilty.
Those that, when they had to make a choice,

faltered in making Vietnam an inviolable socialist territory.

They would have risked a world war...

but that would have forced the
American imperialists into taking a decision.

Those who wage a war of insults and deceit are also guilty,

a war began by representatives of the two great socialist powers.

Then, the famous words:...

"Create 2, 3, many Vietnams".

Terrifying, as only logic can be.

No time for dilettante behaviour or pacifism.

It makes it easy to understand why, after the fiery speeches that followed his death,

there was a palpable sensation of relief.

(Wallander, The Pentagon)

(Major Shelton)

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

The man of whom we will speak tonight met a great destiny.

Look well at his face.

Look at this face that has set
itself forever in History...

This face that has been printed in hundreds of millions...

of posters for a large part of our youth.

This face that represents a myth, a symbol...

of the Cuban Revolution.

This man called Ernesto Guevara de la Serna...

known to all as Che Guevara...

or simply as Che.

(Albina du Boisrouvray)
We moved him and then we asked in code...

the military authorities what were we to do.

They told us to keep him alive.

We took him in helicopter to La Higuera, we put him in the school,

where we dressed his wounds, and he spent the night there.

And a Chief of Staff meeting was held...

to decide what was to be done with Che.

The decision was taken in La Paz.

Yes. It happened more or less like
in the movies.

The ambush, Che wounded,
taken to La Higuera,

whose inhabitants received a reward
from the Bolivian government,

the generals' decision to kill him
transmitted to the local authorities...

and executed by a sub-officer
that today lives under a false name.

The order was given at 11 in the morning,

after we'd kept him from 4 in the
afternoon until 11 in the morning.

There's a bizarre detail... What did it say?

That we had to kill him, but to keep the head intact for identification purposes.

They proposed to set me free...

if I signed a public ideological retraction.

Here are the other photos...

(Cuban Television, October 1967)

And another...

They don't appear too well on the screen.

They are newspaper photos.

So they lose a lot of detail...

(Mario Monje)

If you examine all the documents seriously,

you won't find a single...

agreement of the CP or its leaders...

to collaborate with the Che's guerrilla in Bolivia.

There aren't any!

And nevertheless the Che shows up here.

What can explain such a situation?

We'll have to take into account...

what happened in Congo, the time gone by...

since his disappearance.

And take into account a situation of
explaining before the public opinion

He sent his farewell letter for Congo,

And he couldn't think, just like
no revolutionary could think...

that he'd go to Congo, win,

and then go elsewhere, and win again.

No! He was going there, and that
is where he'd probably have to give his life.

But that didn't happen - for many reasons -...

and he had to leave Africa...

and find something else.

He told me himself:...

"I could never go back to Cuba...

For me, that was done for.

I had said farewell very solemnly".

So he had to find somewhere else...

and Bolivia seemed a good place,

among other things,

because we were in a process
of preparation...

and they knew it.

Then 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 national insurrection

with no set date, no set time...

based on the evolution of the contradictions."

So I told him: Yes,

you've understood me well.

I don't believe the guerrilla...

can lead us to the revolution.

And if you met him today? Would you accept that?

I think he would understand the situation better.

I believe that more than me understanding his tactics,

he'd understand my positions of 1967.

What's more; I think he'd say I was right.

1967 saw the rising of a peculiar kind of teenagers.

They all looked the same.

They recognised each other immediately.

They seemed to have a mute but
absolute knowledge of some things...

while they were completely ignorant of others.

They were incredibly skilful with their hands...

when makings posters, taking out pavement stones,

painting with spray cryptical short
messages that stuck to your mind.

All the time looking for new hands that passed on...

the message they had received,
but didn't managed to decipher entirely.

Those fragile hands left the
mark of their fragility.

They even wrote it in a pamphlet.

"The workers shall take the flag of the
struggle from the fragile hands of the students".

But that was the next year.

I salute the year of 1968
with satisfaction because...

MAY '68
AND ALL THAT:

Why...

do sometimes...

images...

begin...

to shake?

For me, May '68 happened in the Boulevard Saint-Michel.

For me in Prague, in summer '68.

When I saw the Russians I saw the shaking.

I thought I'd managed to control my hands,

but it spread to the camera.

In Santiago de Chile,

the camera slowed itself.

Maybe I was only annoyed to see the situation
reversed, so to say,

and see the charges and the weapons I'd seen used...

so many times against the left in such places as...

Berlin, Lovaine and the United States.

(April 11, 1968)

In some minutes, when I finish work, I'll stand guard...

next to the coffin of a Léon Nicod...

who died age 82.

Died, like every real communist,

in the most complete poverty.

His family was the Party.
His life was the Party.

He founded and carried it with his arms...

for over 20 years.

He was beaten up more than 20 times by the cops,
on horseback or riot gear.

He was questioned a thousand times.

He spent many years of his life in jail.

I knew him little, enough...

to know that his intelligence was
far above average.

He had great humility, tenderness and infinite patience.

He sacrificed it all for the Party,

for the working class,

including his family.

He never had time to work, to travel,

to enjoy these things...

he'd struggled for.

Mayday, 1968, the extreme left...

tries to join the cortège of the 'serious people'...

it doesn't work...

And how is that anticommunism?

Anticommunism is the opposite pole of the left.

These are leftists, amateurs, Trotskists, Anarchists and others,

who take care of spreading anticommunism from inside the working class,

and by doing so, promote division and do a distinguished service to the powerful,

so nobody should accept they march with us.

Courage does not mean
to shout out in the street...

"Ho Chi Minh! Ho Ho!"
or "Guevara! Che Che!"

Courage, for an intelligent person, is not to allow...

himself to become a bloody hassle.

To have that false courage of getting killed tomorrow...

in a 'revolutionary' struggle,
in the name of the 'revolution'.

But never have this authentic courage,
this everyday courage,

which consists of sacrificing your
personality completely to be effective.

There you are.

I'm writing you.

That's not true. I'm writing to
myself as much as to you.

And probably, even more,
to some twenty others.

What is left to say?

That between the castle and the garden...

is the dictatorship of the proletariat?

The working class is neither beautiful, nor good, nor romantic.

It is brutal.

The working class is right.

It does not need to be explained.

(Philippe de Joinet)
And there's also the fact that man...

is a strange and curious animal,

extremely sensible to its surroundings.

It is so because, of all known animals,

it is the one with the strongest sense of emotion...

and the most developed affection.

I believe that what happened was
the crystallization of an emotion...

that developed from and fed on the student movement.

Because we must not forget...

that it all began with solidarity...

with the students...

after the incidents...

provoked by the order given to the police...

of going inside the Sorbonne.

What I mean to say is that, indeed, we have occupied the Sorbonne.

(The Sorbonne, May 3)

It wasn't a real surprise.

We knew the cycle action-repression-mobilization,
new repression, new mobilisation...

We'd seen it in every American campi throughout 1967.

(Paris, Latin Quarter, May 6)

This kind of situation can lead to a double confusion.

At once, the State reveals its oppressive side.

The one that stays more-or-less hidden in everyday life.

But now it has to show its strength.

And, to do so, it allows the police to use...

equipment that nobody even knew existed.

Perfect. For the demonstrator, the State appeared like a vision,

like the Virgin of Lourdes.

It is a revelation.

In extreme cases, someone has the power...

(Italy)
to decide by which side of the road you can walk.

(India)
And, if you choose the wrong side,
they'll kick you out to the right one.

Thus, that thing which forbids you to cross the road is the State.

But if you cross it, and force that something to retreat,

(Ireland)
it is the State that retreats.

Comic Intermezzo

A few days ago, Mr. Minister, you declared
that a handful of agitators...

were responsible for the current disorder.

If you really think that there aren't
more than a handful of these people,

Do you really believe that the demonstrations
of Friday and today would have had so much echo?

(Alain Peyrefitte)
I think we don't have to exaggerate.

The demonstrations of Friday and
of Today are profoundly deplorable,

profoundly condemnable, but they have
not had the violence of the demonstrations...

of Berlin, Warsaw, Bonn, Rome, Algiers, Lovaine...

or Columbia, yesterday, in the United States.

We don't have to exaggerate the
proportion of students of the University of Paris.

There are 160.000 students, and the vast majority of them...

wants to work in peace and the
security forces don't intervene to protect them.

What are you going to do?

My intention is to say 'yes' to constructive dialogue...

and 'no' to violence.

We must put an end to the escalation of violence.

We must do it without heating up passions.

We must recover calm and allow everyone to think.

Today youth is expressing its hatred for a certain kind of society...

(May 10, Rue Gay-Lussac)
going out and building up barricades.

Occupation of the Latin Quarter without provocation to the police.

We won't attack the police.

I ask you, first of all, to the people behind me on the barricade...

A barricade at Rue Drouet that reaches up practically to the second floor.

On that barricade, as in 1848,

flies a flag; a black flag, a red flag...

But now they are telling me that in all this there is an impression...

of a very calm environment, amusing, even.

Well, listen, up to the last minutes there was...

as you said, a calm environment,

but we have received recent information...

which leads us to believe that the police will react,

here, now, there is some unease...

sincerely, I ask the defenders of the barricade that they don't stand on it,

but behind it, because a barricade is raised for protection.

Not on the cars, but behind them. Listen, I've been talking to you for an hour...

There has been an incident at a barricade...

on the end of the Rue Gay-Lussac.

The students have been dispersed with tear-gas

There is a foul-smelling fog...

I can't say whether this is normal tear-gas...

Now they are retreating to their barricades...

and the CRS are going down Boulevard Saint-Michel.

If this society needs all this police force to defend...

the people in power, then our only goal...

is that they assume their responsibilities knowing exactly...

what is happening in the streets, because, whether or not they see it, today...

politics are done in the streets.

Why is it that the police have decided to tear down these barricades,

tear down these ramparts raised by the students?

They must proceed to re-establish circulation,

because, even though now it's 2AM,

in a few hours the cars must be able to run through the quarter,

and perhaps that is why now...

the police have decided to clear the quarter,

specially the Boulevard Saint-Michel, the Rue Saint Jacques and the Rue Gay-Lussac.

Listen, I take up the microphone because I come from the first barricade.

The occupation of the Latin Quarter went fine until 8PM,

it was the police that set off the incidents attacking us with chlorine grenade-launchers.

That is to say, that at this moment, of two things, one:...

The protesters being unable to retreat,

either the police leaves or there will be a massacre worse than Charonne.

Birth of a legend.

They had learned that the workers would assemble at Strasbourg-Saint-Denis.

How much of the paving was taken of the road?

Look, there are places of the road, for example...

the Saint Jacques crossing, where the whole of the road was unpaved,

look, sand, nothing but sand, and the rest...

Birth of an image.

Some CRS have fired their grenades inside the apartments...

No, I don't believe they have shot at the apartments,

they must have aimed at the barricades and some grenades went off target.

No, there's no doubt about, the CRS responded...

firing at the windows, with some grenades reaching the sixth floor.

Well, I receive the information as you give it.

Bernard Lalanne, you are at the Ministry. What's happening there?

Well, nothing at all is happening here.

There were two traffic lights that carried on organising an imaginary traffic...

This is the tactic employed by the police to clear the barricades:...

They set them alight and then fire tear-gas grenades over it,

so the students are forced to abandon barricade after barricade...

We see ourselves forced to use a scarf to be able to...

Attention, no unsuitable heroics, please.

The police are forced to raise their bucklers.

Retreat, retreat!

Indeed, the street fighting is over.

Right now the students are trying to escape through the alleys...

of the Latin Quarter, and there are police cars...

patrolling every street of the Latin Quarter,

and every time they find a group of two, three, or four students,

the police get off and it's always the same scene, a few blows and they arrest them.

On the other hand, I'd like to say the the state of the Rue Gay-Lussac,

the state of the entire Boulevard Saint-Michel, is sad.

When I saw it all at 06:30AM,

at that moment a door woman came out in her robes to look at all this,

and the poor woman started crying.

I understand that woman because, really, there is nothing left,

one has the impression that a storm, a revolution, has taken place here.

Compared to no matter what street in Ireland,

no matter what conflict in South America,

the night of the barricades is derisory.

But Gaullist France had just let herself be persuaded...

that it wasn't immune to what was shaking the rest of the world;...

a well-established idea then.

And when the streets of Paris started looking like...

those of the great cities of Europe and America of the year '68,

it started to think that something had been kept hidden from it.

That time showed us that street violence
does not lead automatically to political change.

The award to the best dramatical confrontation...

was deservedly given to Japan,

where the government didn't even flinch.

Insignificant, by contrast, were the little barricades of Santiago de Chile.

The tag on the reel says, "March, 1968".

A march against inflation led by...

the sister of the socialist candidate
to the presidency, Laura Allende.

Another fragment from March '68

In Brasil, the funeral of
Luis Edson, a student...

murdered by the police during a demonstration.

In Latin America, a whole generation...

of political fighters would end up
under fascist regimes.

Though France had arrived a bit late to join the club,

it had its own veterans.

I was at the barricades.

When I was there I never talked of reformism.

I looked only for one thing.

How to drown De Gaulle and the
entire fucking bourgeoisie.

The MPs have discussed for 10 years.

And in 10 years they got nothing.

We, on the barricades, put the State on its knees.

We want to give power to the workers' councils in the factories...

to the workers' and peasants' councils.

And a soviet-type democracy... Direct democracy

and not universal suffrage which is
the most elaborated form of social dictatorship

(University Director Chapelle)
What astounds me is this dogmatism from one part and this utopia:...

(May 14, "Zoom")
Wanting to supress exams, no less,

exams for which I haven't much affection, by the way,

without presenting an alternative.

And that actually puts your fellow students in great difficulties...

(Alain Geismar)
I'll propose one:

You get an amphitheatre and you fill it with professors and students,

you put a professor and a student at the board...

and the professor poses questions to the student.

If the hall finds the questions to be stupid, the teacher is changed.

If not, it is the hall who judges the student and decides if the answers are good or not.

It is an experiment I'd like to see tried.

(M. Fanton - Secretary Of State for Universities)
For the National Superior Teaching Union,

such proposals are effectively revolutionary,

I have never heard any proposal so revolutionary...

from any teacher, none. And it really surprises me.

Yes, it could happen, but this isn't serious!

So you think these events have been orchestrated from abroad?

Yes, of course I do.

What makes you think so?
The events themselves.

But, what? Could you explain?

It's anarchy. They are foreign anarchists,

French or not, they don't respect anything,
all they do is to commit sacrilege.

What do you think of Cohn-Bendit?

I detest him.
Why?

He shouldn't stir things up here.
He should have stayed in Germany.

Who do you think pays him?
I don't know.

Not the French government. You've been misinformed.

Who do you think does it?

He crossed the border in a
car that belongs to the Chinese Embassy.

They have the right...

to decide where they go.
It's not our style of 'demo'.

Our style of 'demo' is that in which people have the possibility of thinking...

not provoke, provoke, provoke.

(Renault-Cléon)
On May 15 the workers of Cléon go on strike.

Taking their example, workers of Renault,

(Sud-Aviation)
and, little by little, all the country, follow them...

the objectives they set themselves...

The factory is ours and here we are.

Now we are the bosses!

they will negotiate demands
that have been standing for years.

It spreads. It spreads everywhere!

I went to many union meetings myself,

(The Sorbonne)
I've been to many strike committees...

and I've seen how the bosses talk to the workers.

They are terrified.

And when someone is terrified,
he is prone to give in.

And when someone actually gives
in, you have to act.

What are beautiful words and discussions
and all this good for?

It is still certain that the bourgeoisie will never...

simply give us a single iota of its power.

So now you must choose.
Do you want the revolution?

If yes: How do you do it?
Who do you do it with?

What is the enemy's class?
To which class do you belong?

Well, if what you want is a reform...

I must ask myself: What the hell are you doing here with me?

I think the student movement
and the reforms it reclaims...

are very valuable...

but they don't fit in with the demands made at the factories.

We are going through a complicated moment.

(Georges Séguy, CGT leader)
We have realised...

we must take into consideration two essential factors:

Firstly,

the underestimation of the
profundity of the class movement...

that has followed the eruption of the student movement.

Secondly,

the attempts from the left to make it lose its way...

and the attempts of certain elements...

to take the place...

of the workers' organisations,
particularly the CGT's,

trying to overtake the leadership of
the movement in their own benefit.

They started a movement,
brought us into the fight...

not forcibly. To be frank, they awoke us.

(March 1969, Saint Florentin)
I don't understand why, during the strikes...

the unions, who were those who called them...

No, you're wrong!

They were against the strikes.
Not one union called for a strike.

(Extract of a CGT propaganda film, 1969)

(May '68, Sud-Aviation)
The union representatives got together and said:

"We must make a decision today and propose it to the workers immediately".

Then it was when three unions, of their own accord, said:

"We must assemble the workers outside of the offices...

and ask them if they agree to occupy the factory".

They offered their support because...

they knew that, one way or another, it would happen.

It began by itself. They didn't want to push people to strike.

They slowed things down when they went too far.

But the government provoked the strike...

because it was afraid.

Because if a confidence vote was taken...

they knew they'd lose.

And, moreover, it meant retaking with the government...

and being capable of governing.

And that is really hard.

(Livio Mascarello, CGT, Mayo '68)
It is necessary to understand...

that the scale of the movement,
the power it represents,

means disconcerting the government.

This supposes a problem for them,

though I must say it hasn't reacted yet.

I believe our social-democrat friends...

feel there's a vacuum of power.

It is not so simple.

(May 28 - François Miterrand)
I propose that a provisional government...

and an acting administration...

be formed immediately.

Why is it not so simple?

Why? Because there must be an alternative...

Now the Movement is for...

economical and social change.

So we must offer the working class a solution.

That solution would be a common programme...

of all the forces of the left.

But that doesn't exist.

The forces of the left must carry out...

their responsibilities without delay...

and agree on a minimum programme of government...

that shows the way to a democratic alternative: a popular government.

Today, for example,

the workers are talking...

of a shift of the power to the left.

This sensation comes from the strike committee.

They want to go further now.

(CGT Propaganda Film, 1969)
That's why many workers looked further.

Further?
To start the revolution...

we must change the government.

All we saw was a change in social policy, that's all.

(CGT Delegate, May '68)
They don't want just economical changes,

but also political changes.

They want both things.
They've had enough.

And what's more: the longer it takes...

the stronger will be the determination
of achieving political change.

I spoke with many workers. They feel it is not worth...

making demands that the regime itself will forget.

They want a change, political and economic.

(The Sorbonne)
This is what I see when I speak with the workers.

I believe that we must politicise ourselves the most we can,

Both ourselves and the workers.

(Citroën)
There's only one goal, get rid of the bosses.

How are you going to fire them?
Is that your best joke?

This is the front line!
Everything starts here!

This is the point where life
becomes something big.

When there aren't any more
bosses to sod you up.

This is the demand we have to make.

The bosses don't matter!
Right! We have to start there.

We won't get rid of them with
out voting papers, that's for sure.

Not by voting...
We need someone who knows how to govern.

A lot of people know how to govern!
Look, there's the boss.

I'd vote for you!

While the factory is occupied,
we need a PR man.

Let's forget the meaning of the word 'boss'.
'Boss'? What's that?

The direction of a business,
of a factory,

has become, in the modern world,
in a specialist's domain.

(M. Wolgensinger)
They talk about a company of managers and, truly,

the person who directs the factory today
is the management technician.

Thus, a boss should be a member of the board, and not...

a boss who keeps what we earn.

It saddens us that dialogue is so hard with the unions.

But it happens that they aren't professional unions, but unions...

which are largely politicised.

I ask myself if History will teach us that...

the victories, quantitatively, of the French workers' world...

demands isn't a deviation of its original expression.

(Edgard Pisani)
I think that there's a terrible complicity...

between the conservative apparatus
of the CGT and that of the government.

The CGT is truly the only union for the worker.

As I see it, it is the only union that
has been able to defend a closed position...

article one comes to mind...

What does article one say?

Supression of employers and the wage system.

(May 27, Paris, Charléty Stadium)
The CGT hasn't been able...

or, more likely, hasn't wanted to see...

the real character of this movement.

It's quite obvious, or else the words
no longer have meaning...

that we are going through a
revolutionary movement.

When we look, despite the prohibition...

of the Communist Party and the CGT, at what is happening,

we can honestly say:
Anything is possible!

The battle is on, and we shall go until the end, that's to say,

until the only possible solution:
The socialist revolution!

The French bourgeoisie trusts the Communist Party...

because it hasn't been able to read
the situation and won't go any further.

(Trostkist worker)
Why can't it?
Why, what?

Why can't it go any further, for you?

Because since it exists, since...

the war, maybe before,

its militants got used to think...

according to what the direction decided.

Finally, it was Stalin who destroyed it all.

Trotsky was right: Socialism can't
happen in only one country.

Stalin said it could be done.

Experience shows it has been done.

No, the USSR isn't socialism, not at all.

I believe the capitalist system,

in the traditional sense of the word,

and the communist or, socialist system,

given that the very communists say...

they have a socialist economy,
at least for the moment...

and that communism will come when all problems are solved.

I think these two forms of society are,
right now, antiquated...

and that what we are seeing and will see...

is the construction of new structures...

be they for a socialist or for a, not capitalist, but a liberal economy,

that can come up with solutions...

And, why not, a rapprochement of these two tendencies,

given that, for example, in Russia
today we see...

a complete change in economical policy.

Re-introduction of profit, competition, etc.

Haven't the objectives of
the strikes been forgotten in this kermesse?

No, they aren't forgotten,

But they take place at a different level.

In a different level of that
of the workers.

They know that there are trusted comrades in talks with the bosses...

Before May, there was a whole new critique
to the unions, regarding their submission

May came and everything changed.
They can no longer fight the same way,

They no longer trust this kind of
bureaucracy that has installed itself in,

which they may or may not accept,

and it breaks my heart to say this, but it is true.

If the unions have established negotiations...

then we should know about them, and this...

the lads grumble a lot about this.

(March 1969)
Either way, there was a revolutionary element.

There was something else.

People left our factories without...

even knowing what our demands were.

They all left and the strike took
place under union legality.

I mean, a vote was taken...

The majority voted for the strike.
Everything was perfect.

They went because there was a
general movement to get rid of De Gaulle,

to change all that.

Later, we made notebooks
with our demands.

The people understand perfectly...

that the Grenelle Report,

and I say 'Report' because
people always correct me.

When I say Agreement they say
that it is a Report. Report, then.

There wasn't a Grenelle Agreement, there was a Report.

This Grenelle Report
shut off the movement.

The bourgeoisie played their cards
well, I think.

They felt cornered, so they
made a concession.

They raised the minimum wage.

This mass of people,

who wasn't prepared for
a long political struggle...

because they'd never
talked about it,

found themselves with a raise,

a rather large raise.

The apolitical ones, 2 or 3 millions...

of the 9 million strikers,

couldn't understand why we wanted
to go any further.

They couldn't understand why carry
on the strike.

Specially because they felt nobody
wanted anything more.

It is clear that there were bad
moments in the organizations of the Left.

After 8-10 days a critique was established,

they criticized everything a bit, the student movement,

The students; It was normal they came
with us to certain demonstrations,

but they had a provocative
attitude which wasn't accord...

to the conception the working
class had of the struggle.

We saw them come with helmets, with bats...

Maybe one will always be someone else's leftist.

(French Newsreel, October 1948)
In Saint-Étienne, however, the CGT strikers,

shunned by their comrades from the other two unions,

take to counter-attack and attack the CRS with stones,

screws, and iron bars.

(Flins - June 7, 1968)
At the beginning there was a certain malaise, it has to be acknowledged,

some workers from Renault were convinced by alleged students...

to face the police forces. They let themselves be fooled,

they really believed the students would come to help them.

And I say alleged students, because I saw groups of real students,

that when the time came to fight, simply left saying:...

"We haven't come for this, we came to help you, not to fight".

It was a really well set-up job, eh?

They had done things well. Health service first of all.

(June 15 - Burial Gilles Tautin)
There were many workers in front of the cars,

and they wanted to demonstrate in front of the factory,

the cops all came out of the factory,

and pursued them through the fields, well,

until they halted in the town, and grenade after grenade,

made us retreat.

And it was just after midday that they sent...

(May 'Ciné-Tract')
the guys from Melin. The students. They were taken out of the cars...

made to get into line and then the police attacked them,

surrounded them, the boys threw themselves into the Seine so as not to be caught,

And then they held them from coming back. And the one who took out his gun,

we nearly lynched him. If the best of the four-eyes hadn't come,

we'd have lynched him.

There were elections after the movement.

They were a defeat for us.
Why a defeat?

A lot of people were afraid.

They were very scared.

What did we show them?
4 or 5 burned cars?

It isn't a lot, but 4 or 5
in one night,

even if they were the same 4 the next day...

They had a lot of TV airtime...

and, to top it, there was a lot
of pacifist people...

who weren't to quick to reflect...

but who got scared with anything...

like snails who went into theirs shells.

And that made them panic.

If anything was threatened violently in May...

it wasn't them, but the bourgeoisie.

It was the bosses.
It's quite clear.

But then they thought that
anarchy had arrived...

"Will there be food in the shops?"

It wasn't much, but it was important.

What was the impression in France...

when the TV showed cars burning, Paris in flames?

Burning cars!
A country in ruins!

Even the Germans,
and I don't like the Germans,

but even they avoided the
destruction of Paris...

And now these people come and set fire to it,

they set fire to the Sorbonne.
It's atrocious!

They've set fire to the Sorbonne and everywhere.
It's atrocious!

(Avignon, July)

The movement has found its main enemy, Jean Vilar,

and for this occasion, they've come up with a stupid slogan,

in a time they seemed to compete for those:

Béjart, Vilar, Salazar

Béjart!

Vilar!

Salazar!

The work of the Living Theatre
has been played...

on three successive nights.

And there have been no demands
to close it down...

inside the Carmes Cloister.

And that is all I have to say.

Down with the bourgeois festival!

One remembered the solitude of Vilar...

and asked himself where were all
those people he'd helped...

and for whose worked he'd fought.

It was a time of bitterness and madness
of which some would never come out.

It was a strange way of being
faithful to the spirit of May.

Giving up so soon and lashing out so blindly...

against the tricks History played.

Anyway, History wasn't being written in
Avignon that summer.

It was being written in Prague.

END OF THE FIRST PART

Second Part
THE SEVERED HANDS

(French Newsreel, May 1945)
In Europe, Prague was one of the first victims of nazi rapacity.

These images give testimony of the last days of occupation...

when the Czech capital liberated itself, like Paris, on early May.

In every country of the world, except in Germany,

the paving stones were converted in the barricades of freedom.

In Prague, the archives of the Gestapo were thrown into the sewers...

and the hook-cross was thrown into the fire.

(Soviet Newsreel, May 1945)
Our tanks...

are pushing South; it is the last campaign in the war.

They approach the enemy, who still fights.

The salvation of Prague depends on their speed.

One hour more supposes 100.000 lives.

The first Soviet tank that entered free Prague carried the number 23.

It was the same tank, now a monument,

that was surround by other Russian tanks in August 1968.

FROM THE PRAGUE SPRING
TO THE COMMON PROGRAMME

In a wall in Bratislava one can read:

"Lenin, wake up. Brezhnev has gone mad".

Everywhere clandestine radio stations transmit non-stop.

But the most significant message of August 21...

was the one summoning all delegates...

of the XIV Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

The delegates are taken by car to a factory...

in a working-class quarter were the congress is held.

The most recognisable are taken in trucks or ambulances.

A clandestine camera has preserved the images of this clandestine congress.

Let me emphasise what we see here:

This is not an improvised manifestation, however numerous.

This is the legal expression of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

A congress called by the Central Committee from June 1st.

With delegates elected according to the rules during the months of June and July.

And, despite the change of date, accelerated by the Russian invasion,

1182 delegates are present.

That is, 3/4 of the entire organisation.

So, according to the statutes, the congress...

is, for the moment, the only organism with legitimacy to lead the Party.

First orator: Vaculik.
The main reality...

is that of the occupation of the Republic by allied troops.

A occupation decided without the consent of our president,

our government, Assembly, or Central Committee.

Next question: the unanimous reaction of our peoples against the occupation.

This unanimous reaction is, to my eyes, the only decisive sign...

that the Party should take into account regarding what attitude it should assume.

If we want to be loyal to the compromise of our people we cannot express ourselves otherwise.

We'll never be friends of the USSR again!

It's 'autumn leaves'. Wet paper.

We've waited...

We've had faith for 20 years,

100 years. It's too much.

Brezhnev arrives on July 29 to Cierna nad Tisou, Slovakia, in his special train...

having spent the night crossing Soviet territory.

There were many embraces, but the final communiqué was still vague.

Brezhnev and Dubcek no longer gave words the same meaning.

Dubcek goes to Moscow and finds another Brezhnev who threatens with military invasion and 'normalization'.

We could ask ourselves why Dubcek and those with him...

were given the relative honour of sitting at a negotiation table...

without the presence of the President of the Republic, Svoboda,

who goes to Moscow of his own initiative in search of the abducted members of the Central Committee.

Brezhnev welcomes him as though it all was a show of Czech-Soviet friendship...

and they parade through the streets of Moscow...

three days before the troops of the Warsaw Pact invade Czechoslovakia.

BROTHERS!

What are you doing in Prague?

And you call yourself a communist?

(Havana, August 23, 1968)
Some things we'll say, in some cases...

will be in contradiction...

with the emotions of many.

In other cases, they will be in contradiction...

with our own interests.

And in others...

will constitute grave perils...

to our country.

We believe that...

the decision taken in Czechoslovakia,

can only be explained,

from a political point of view,

not a legal point of view,

because as far as legality is concerned,

it has frankly none!

What circumstance have led to...

a remedy of such nature?

A remedy that places the international...

revolutionary movement in a difficult situation.

A remedy which creates a truly traumatic situation...

for a people, such as the situation of the Czechoslovak people.

Which forces an entire people...

to go through the thankless...

situation of seeing...

its country occupied by the armies of other countries,

though they may be socialist.

This situation that makes millions of citizens of a country...

in the tragic dilemma of choosing to be...

either passive in this situation,

which reminds them of previous events,

or to opt for the fight, side by side,

with pro-American agents,

with enemies of socialism,

with West-German spies,

and all this fascist and reactionary rabble...

which under these circumstances...

will try to present themselves as...

patriots and freedom-fighters for Czechoslovak liberty.

But the essential thing, which may be accepted or not,

is this: Could the socialist bloc allow...

the development of a political situation...

which led to the split...

of a socialist country...

and its fall in the arms of imperialism?

Our view is: it couldn't have allowed it.

And the socialist bloc has the right...

to prevent it, one way or another.

(Georges Marchais, Secretary General of the French Communist Party)

(Lille, 1970)
The French Communist Party...

has declared its opposition to the invasion...

and that position has not changed.

It was reaffirmed in our XIXth Congress.

I can resume the reasons of this position in three phrases:

In January 1968, when the Czechoslovak Communist Party...

pronounced itself for the economical changes in the country...

for the application of a real socialist democracy...

while it would affect in no way its internal affairs,

we found that perspective to be fair and we supported it.

However, it is evident that in a country like Czechoslovakia...

which has been socialist for only 25 years,

it is necessary to fight against forces hostile to socialism.

But we, as we always believed...

thought that the Czech Communist Party and the democratic Czech workers...

were strong enough to solve this problem themselves.

It was the first time that a list of candidates...

for a conference hadn't been prepared beforehand.

Anyone present could take part in the proceeding.

Any delegate was free to challenge the orator.

You've just said 'we'. I can say 'we', too.

We are all delegates here, and it's up to us to reach an agreement.

(Etienne Fajon)
Roger Garaudy does his utmost to deform these realities. In his most recent writings...

In his more recent writings, the prodigious work...

of the Soviet Union is reduced to a series of mistakes,

Only the October Revolution is valid to his eyes,

and the solidarity with the CPSU is replaced by the denunciation of the Party...

and the systematic and often injurious critique of its leaders.

He undertakes against the USSR and the socialist countries, it must be said,

the reaction's calumny.

(Jorge Semprún)
It isn't a Party disciplined in a military way that takes power...

in October 1917. It's a Party where there was freedom of expression...

freedom of association, of discussion between fractions.

All of it while it took the power.

It was much later, after the victory,

that this clash of opinions was...

codified as impossible inside the Party.

But the Party that took the power...

was not the model of Party imposed in the entire world.

Such Party, today, would be expelled...

from the Communist workers' movement...

for the very same reasons
why the members...

of the Czech Communist Party who tried...

to retake this fight were expelled...

All members of the Central Committee...

elected during the congress will be expelled from the Party.

The XIVth Congress itself will be declared null and void.

Dubcek in Moscow will have to finish the operation of exorcism.

So, look well at these images.

They show something which, apparently, never happened.

A Communist Party, which, moving away from Stalinism,

transforms and reinvents itself in socialist democracy...

something the reactionaries would say is impossible.

An opinion shared by the Soviets.

This must be what they call Peaceful Coexistence.

(Emil Zatopek)

Recording of Zatopek in 1952, in Helsinki,

A small island of peace in the Cold War,

that one day will be seen by historians as...

the first attempt to cross the abyss between East and West,

before the turns of ping-pong and basketball diplomacy started,

At a moment when the War in Korea seemed to predict a very different future.

There was a team from South Korea in Helsinki,

and its cook was the man Leni Riefenstahl had filmed,

as winner of the marathon...

In the Berlin Olympics of 1936.

Just that, by then, he was Japanese.

You never know what you are filming.

Leni Riefenstahl thought that she was filming a Japanese, and it was a Korean.

In '52 I thought I was filming the winning rider of the Chilean team.

I was filming a putschist.

Turns out it was Lieutenant Mendoza,

later General Mendoza,

member of Pinochet's Junta.

You never know what you are filming.

What did they say the cameras thought...

they were showing at the Stadium in Munich 1972?

Astonishment to see the games...

carry on despite the death of 8 Israelis?

But in Mexico City in 1968 I'd seen 200 people massacred...

so that the Games could begin.

Student demonstration, May '68, quickly repressed the Mexican way.

Two hundred dead, and the Games opened in a pacified capital.

Not a single country turned down the invitation.

Was it because of this, this nightmare of History, as someone called it,

that in the Munich Stadium in 1972...

Emil Zatopek cried?

Or was it, more precisely, was he back
at the Helsinki stadium in 1952...

which, for the Czechs, was more than anything, the year of the Slánsky trials?

Defendant Slánsky, after 30 years in the Czech Party,

what made you put yourself at the service of the imperialists...

and direct the conspiracy against the Popular Republic?

(Rudolf Slánsky. 14 months earlier Secretary General of the Czechoslovak Communist Party)

To explain myself,

I must say a few things about my past.

I did take part...

in the workers' movement,

but I come from a bourgeois background.

Eleven death sentences.

The first, Slánsky's.

Three life sentences minus the time spent in jail during trial...

to Vavro Hajdu, Eugen Löbl
and Arthur London.

The questions they asked astonished me.

(Arthur London)
And the answers they tried to obtain by force...

The questions were identical to the ones in the Rajk process...

and, some time after, on the Kostov process.

Afterwards, I remembered the Moscow trials...

when we had felt so annoyed seeing...

Lenin's comrades on the benches of infamy.

We couldn't understand it then, and we felt ill.

These things coma back...

And I realised that the process, the whole drama...

in which I had taken part...

was the repetition of these trials that had taken place in Moscow.

That it was all a show.

Something inherent to the Stalinist...

system of the '30s.

By using the term 'Stalinist', doesn't one risk...

sealing it historically...

and restrict it to a series...

of historical, geographical and social circumstances...

of a given country at a given age?

Or is it a permanent danger...

which has to be fought at all times?

It is a permanent danger, which is all the more dangerous...

because it hasn't been examined in depth.

Stalinism...

has been a grave deformity...

of socialism.

Deformity which has had extremely...

painful consequences...

for the Soviet people...
and for communists around the world.

It's an ambiguous term...

because, it supposes, that, to start with,

that evolution is connected...

to a man, or a group of men,

and maybe, perhaps, a social situation of isolation and regression.

In such a way that, once a certain kind...

of leader has left the scene of History,

and a certain kind of isolation...

and regression have left the scene of History,

these phenomena won't happen again.

But experience shows that that is not exactly right.

Let's look at Czechoslovakia:

A developed country,

a country with a working class, with a long democratic tradition,

with a long tradition of struggles of all kinds,

with an authentic Communist Party,

which doesn't depend on foreign intervention or foreign orders.

Even there it was possible to impose a certain model...

which we'll call, to keep it simple, Stalinist.

Thus, apart from historical,

geographical and economic reasons,

we must find a supplementary reason, to use a fashionable word,

which overdetermines the others.

I think that we must look for this phenomenon ...

of overdetermination in the very working mechanism of the institutions of power

and the Party institutions.

(Jean Eillenstein, Historian, member of the French Communist Party)

The French CP, from 1944 to 1953 was undoubtedly Stalinist...

We must recognise that we were all Stalinists.

Thousands of French Communists were Stalinists at the time.

But, what is this we call 'Stalinism'?

Stalinism, first of all,

supposes that the USSR is the first socialist State.

And that it defended and built socialism...

under historically horrendous conditions.

I think that, in moments of crisis and action,

everything easilly turns black and white.

In those times, a critical thinking can delay necessary action.

But I believe that it is vital no to let it become a norm.

Because the lack and destruction of critical thinking...

always ends up turning against the cause...

which is defended with abnegation.

I believe there is, in the tradition of the workers and communist movements,

a long-term deformity...

which equals political and military comparisons.

What I mean is, in a military structure, the orders...

(April, 1975)
go from the Staff to the troops.

Rankless soldiers are mere executors...

(24th Congress of the CPSU)
of the received orders,
the given plans,

They never take part in the joint discussion...

of strategical plans.

It's hard to imagine an army assembled to democratically voted...

the decisions taken by the commanders or the HQ.

It's unthinkable, for good or for evil, unthinkable.

And as far as political action is concerned,

all attempts of reproducing this model is ill-fated ...

for political action.

Thus, the radical difference is that a mass political action...

cannot be conceived without a constant dialectic...

which destroys constantly the understanding between the base and the head...

and that creates a new understanding at every moment.

Or: the base's, the masses' initiative in politics...

must act as a impulsive force at all levels:

union, political, committee, at a workers' democracy level,

in a way that it constitutes itself in a new impulse...

and that this impulse goes back to the masses.

(IX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, April 1st, 1969)

Chairman Mao...

and his close comrade-at-arms,
Lin Piao, leave the stage.

The crowd cheers.

LETTER TO SOME COMRADES

You've dreamt your China.

Apparently, you have to wash the dishes of this revolution,

so that it looks immaculate, explainable.

Everything else will be done without you.

You found your use there: explain, explain everything.

Wasn't it enough for you that human history, as it is,

with its horrors and dark patches,

took away 700 million people...

from misery and slavery,

even though it may be through new servitudes,

against which a new wave of History stirs and fights?

No, it all has to be satisfied at once.

Political theory, democracy, philosophy,

even art and literature.

Good. Even if you skip the contradictions...

you don't do much in the perpetual struggle between the two lines.

But it is always deciphered in retrospective,

and from the victor's point of view.

You practice an inverse form of dialectics, which start at the end,

or what's the same, the position of the dominating faction,

and return to a, until now, imperceptible origin.

Each crisis gave birth not only to a new future,

but to a new past...

perfectly clear, though a bit tedious.

Humble and naive people resisted their own way:

Naively... humbly.

Not you.

Your intelligence was reaffirmed by liars.

You feel the vertigo of stupidity and leave...

the real climbers to face the real vertigo...

with a feeling of pride and victory.

By explaining it all, by justifying it all,

you side with the more traditional role that tyranny has assigned intellectuals.

Your sole originality...

consists in that you did while you proclaimed the end of tyranny...

and while you persuaded yourself you had worked to destroy it.

Georges Pompidou, President of France who'd soon be dead,

meets Jian Qing, wife of Mao Tse-Tung, who'd soon be a widow.

On the doorstep of the Great Helmsman, Pompidou is welcomed by Wang Hong-Wen,

promoted by the Cultural Revolution to the heights of the Central Committee...

to represent it symbolically.

At this time, Mao is the last of this special kind of men...

who reign no so much because they impose their will,

even if they do impose a lot,

but because they incarnate something.

This has to do with a need to believe,

of having faith, the fear of the void, of the paternal figure.

All this does not represent the most comforting possibility of man...

but is the stuff with which dreams are made.

The right thing here is to think there's a slight miscasting.

It was De Gaulle who should have met Mao. At least, that's what History wanted.

But History gets old...

and loses sight, and can be tricked easily.

Specially if one is a child of the elites and moreover stimulated by ingratitude.

I don't think I have what is called a 'political future'.

(Georges Pompidou, February 1969)
I have a political past.

I may have, God willing, a national destiny.

Thus begins the war of sucession, in China as in France.

With the complicity, bitter or ironic, or so it seems, of those that were to be succeeded.

(Maurice Grimaud)
I saw him at the end of June...

and he was a different man.

He seemed exhausted and obviously insecure about his future...

even though he'd won the match after the 30th of May,

and had managed to revert the situation.

But General De Gaulle had been clearly...

touched by the events.

And many of his most loyal men were...

thinking of abandoning him.

They thought that he had become a...

bothersome figure and abandoned him.

(Alain Touraine)
The left had...

joined De Gaulle during the events of May and June...

and it was the right that got rid of him in April.

An analysis of the results of the referendum is quite clear on this.

(André Malraux)
Today, April 23, it is no longer legal reasons...

those who will determine the results of 10000 votes.

As in many other circumstances,

'Yes' is a vote of trust in De Gaulle...

and 'No' the expression of the wish that he leaves.

(Giscard D'Estaing)
In response to the only question asked...

and which seeks my approval for the entire law,

as far as I'm concerned, unfortunately, but certainly,

I'll vote no.

We must try to understand why this progressive substitution of De Gaulle for a liberal bourgeois party.

I think it can be explained in two ways:...

One of the reasons that justified De Gaulle's rise to power,

the institutional disorder, the political impotence in the War in Algeria,

and the big obstacles to economical modernisation in France.

One can argue that those problems are largely solved.

That De Gaulle, a restorer, has remodelled the system and that we no longer need him.

On the other hand, economically, it's been a time when France has developed itself in a technocratic way,

with a leading role of the State without an apparatus of incorporation of the French economy,

as it is, to the Common Market and a larger Atlantic space,

essential for the large business that want the power to develop a multinational base...

and which are 'sinners' according to the Gaullist conception.

I think the majority answer will be 'no'.

Judging by what people say...

People are tired of his way...

of acting. "If the 'yes' doesn't win I'll leave".

Well, leave then!

Life will go on without him.

Anyway, he could die tomorrow morning...

and we'd have to replace him.
We are only human.

My husband nearly died a while ago,

I wasn't thinking of dying with him or committing suicide.

We have to go on living.

(April 1969, RTL, Paris)
Mr. Miterrand, I'd like to ask you this: Until the end of...

the May crisis your public image was that of...

the man who would put an end to the Gaullist regime.

How would present yourself before public opinion now?

What is your position before the referendum campaign?

(François Miterrand)
Allow me to underline firstly that I'm here...

as a guest of Radio Luxemburg.

But I'll answer your question.

You haven't put in the same wording as Broussine.

All that you were asked was if you are candidate to the presidency of the Republic.

Aren't you hurrying a bit?

Do you think a goverment of a united left is possible?

It should be possible, if everybody has the will.

Please, gentleman. Mr. Miterrand has the word to conclude.

It's getting late.

I must ask you not to interrupt.

I have already said, recently and publicly,

so this is no improvised answer,

that it seems absurd to me to think
that in our French country,

where we can have a French model of socialism,

to push for collective appropriation...

of the means of production and exchange.

Or to reduce French agriculture to the
category of 'kolkhozes',

Or that we think of nationalising and
collectivising...

the whole of French enterprises.

I've always said that we must...

combine our programme with the laws
of the market,

which means, in economical terms, to take into account the laws of profit.

Even with the best conscience, in the collective appropriation...

it's not possible to ignore the laws of profit.

So don't put words in my mouth which I haven't said.

After 50 years of socialist experiences...

we won't take the same path of mistakes...

that perhaps were indispensable or inevitable in the past.

We'll only take what is good from it.

Napoleon wrote: "I've made my plans with the dreams of my sleeping soldiers".

Often General De Gaulle made plans with the dreams of a sleeping France.

Because he found at his side, Frenchmen who didn't want to sleep.

Your yes so that he know he may count on you.

And also, to send a message to those who prepare something...

for the night of the referendum, thing that would be very grave.

And also, so that these adversaries know that if they want to recommence May,

we are ready to recommence the Champs Elysees March!

No: 53%.
Yes: 47%.

(Senate, April 27)
Little after midnight, General De Gaulle...

announces his departure in a
three line declaration.

Goodbye, goodbye De Gaulle!

And the next government? What has it got in store for us?

What now? There can be no Gaullists without De Gaulle.

We are constantly in this vicious circle.

We ask for small improvements in our lives.

But we give power to those who...

prevent us from living in a decent manner.

A man once told me: "Vote as red as you want,

it will pale down with time".

If we assume that the CP is the strongest party,

the best structured and organised,

the one the workers trust the most,

then, if it looks for an alliance to its right,

first the Socialist Party, then the middle-class, then, who knows?

There's no other path to real change but the path of unity.

I don't believe it possible to make a union of organisations of the left.

And, in fact, I think we must make a critique of this idea.

Which is, how many of these organisation really want a change in the regime?

I agree with you and what you are saying, but I don't believe in Guy Mollet.

There are people who still remember...

Anyhow, I remember...

Two years in Algeria with Guy Mollet count for something.

For me it's over!

So I told him:

The problem is not Guy Mollet.

The problem is winning the common struggle...

of communist and socialist workers,

and that of all democrats.

And I told him: "If you know an easier way, propose it to me, I'm simple man,

I'm willing to follow it".
But there is no other way.

(Party of L'Humanité, 1972)
Buy the T-shirts of Popular Unity!

Contribute to the triumph of Popular Unity!

Buy the common programme!

The programme of the Communist and Socialist parties and of the Left Radicals...

Our objective is the transformation of society.

It is indispensable that we have a majority of the people on our side...

in our democratic and revolutionary struggle.

The question of democracy...

is fundamental for the development of socialism.

I've explained in "History of the Stalinist phenomenon"...

that Lenin himself underestimated the importance of democracy.

Do you renounce the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?

Let's say not to the concept, for its mainly theoretical.

It hasn't a, let's say, operative value.

Would Lenin agree?

Maybe Lenin yes, but Marx surely wouldn't.

For Marx it was a concept opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

For Lenin it was different because precisely he...

led a Party that had taken power...

through a violent revolution, and had kept it by force.

So he had assimilated the theoretical concept of Dictatorship of the Proletariat...

together with the practical concept of directing a State in a dictatorial manner.

Because of this, in the Soviet Constitution of 1918,

the voice of one worker was worth 25,000 peasant voices.

That's why other parties were forbidden,

that's why there was no freedom of press, nor assembly, nor information, etc.

So there was a theoretical slide that was harmful...

because it hindered the democratic development...

that socialism needed in countries such as ours.

(In 1979, Eillenstein would be 'self-expelled' from the Party)

What counts and what is essential...

(United Left rally for the presidential election, La Courneuve, 1974)

is our concept of freedom and our capability of accepting difference without sectarianism.

Encouraged only by the need of liberating man from exploitation.

The Communist Party has moved..

from orthodoxy to the monopoly of heterodoxy.

In a way that the only good critique of Stalinism...

comes from inside the Communist Party itself.

It's inevitable that we clash, though not in the sense of fighting.

We find other works...

Debate is inevitable given that
we work in the same terrain...

and we part from similar set of principles.

Nothing can put obstacles to these confrontations...

becoming more profound and rich...

Another question is that of the political line.

I think the confusion arises, caused specially by the communists.

Some of them still don't get things right.

There's confusion outside and, sometimes, inside the CP...

insofar as political line is concerned...

and in the areas of debate...

and Marxist discussion and investigation.

I believe they have to take place in two different levels.

Sometimes it happened that these differences were felt quite rudely,

outside of the factories.

For us there is no way of fighting other than the workers' front.

Unity over internal divergences.

Unity of all workers and their organizations, to achieve our demands.

To overthrow the bourgeois and police State.

They are protected by the police, comrades.
Don't fall in their traps.

We've seen many times how this happened outside of the company's doors.

We deplore it, but we must speak clearly to show...

that we won't put down our flag before Stalinism...

We'll defend our political line...

and the workers' victories.

We defend the victories of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917...

that Stalinism and the bureaucracy are wasting.

Down with fascism!

Fascism shall fail!

Workers' democracy!

Stop the provocation!

(Prague, January 25, 1969. Funeral of Jan Palach)

I don't think it was a suicide, because a suicide means...

It's a solution for an individual...

I don't see any way out so I kill myself.

But that he had killed himself is completely different...

because he did it for everybody, not for himself.

He's shown a courage that none of us have.

He's done something truly extraordinary...

because he has made us feel guilty... For nor acting before.

We could have negotiated with someone, or...

I think this whole cortège expresses guilt.

FROM CHILE TO:
WHAT? THAT'S IT?

One day, we were successful; A Super-8 camera got inside the Lecumberrí jail, Mexico.

The next occasion was the magnetic tape with the voice of Solzhenitsyn

I'll water...

I'll woods...

A cruel prince, with slanted eyes,

has stolen this lake...

The footprints.

Someone has lit a fire.

The fire has gone out.

The man is gone.

The lake is desert,

beloved lake,

motherland.

Greetings to all French audience from Persepolis.

(Persepolis, 1979. Commemoration of the 25.000th anniversary of the Persian kingdom)

The first image showed the Shah of Persia and the Shahbanou,

welcoming the illustrious and august guests of all lands:

Kings, princes, heads of state...

Are united in Persepolis, the Versailles of yore.

What an image!

The Shahbanou of Iran with Mr. Podgorny,
president of the USSR:

There's Marshall Tito and Lady Tito...

and many heads of state that represent almost
every nation in the world.

I don't think I have ever seen so many crowned heads...

and some many heads of state together.

Meanwhile two heralds...

come to announce the beginning of the ceremony.

The heralds come to inform his Imperial Majesty,

the Shah-in-shah Arya Mehr, which means,
"King of kings, light of the aryans",

that the feasts are ready.

"King of kings, light of the Aryans."

Thus also begin the loyalty declarations that Iranian police...

make the families of condemned men sign, in exchange for the mercy of the sovereign,

whom we see here protected by his bullet-proof vest.

combed by a French hairdresser...

(Wanted: Ulrike Meinhoff, from the Baader group)

and every important lady who takes part in the ceremony...

has had her hair done by a famous parisian hairdresser, and they make up done...

(Larry Bensky)

If you engage in revolutionary activity in any country...

you risk no only repression but death.

If you are thinking about becoming a revolutionary...

you should know, though it may not be a happy thought,

that any day you can find yourself...

(Arrest of Margrit Schiller)

Ulrike.
Tania.

Sarita.

Nguyen Van Troi.

Javier Héraud.

Malcolm X.

Camilo Torres.

Txiki.

Víctor Jara.

Julian Grimau.

George Jackson.

Carlos Marighella.

Roque Dalton.

Pierre Overnay.

Pierre Overnay was killed without being, by any instance, a threat to the officer in charge,

whom, apparently, shot him without having been attacked. Paralel to the investigation,

has naturally aroused many comments; For the CGT it was a provocation,

such acts are made to deviate the workers from their true demands.

Let's see.

An action never judged by its support among the workers...

receives tags from whoever wants to put them.

For the left of the regime: Provocation.

For the CFDT: An adventure.

For the CGT: Capitulation.

There was a whole repertoire of stupid words: 'Lefty', 'revisio',

so as not to look for the complexity of the conflict in a sort of...

binary system, where each defined himself not by the class struggle,

but by the struggle between the organisations.

It is that from the moment you give...

an organization the monopoly of the representation of the class,

it evidently no longer matters.

As though we had to wait until the day we had our backs against the walls...

of a stadium surrounded by the military to realise that we had something to talk about.

As though the frontiers of the organizations and the grupuscules,

separated foreign towns instinctively hostile.

So we played at opposing each other; Grand against Joint Français, LIP against Rateau.

You send us against the cops, put us out in the street,

and now you want to negotiate? You're ridiculous!

It wasn't so clear at the bases.

Well, the negotiations are broken up, the strike fund is zeroed,

what do we do? Can we produce?

Produce what?
Doesn't matter what.

I don't know, you could give your opinion, if you think we have done...

enough for two months' strike or not.

I'd like to know what you think.

Anyway, we have a wonderful oportunity of showing ourselves,

at next week's demo.

If we put 500 or 600 men on the street...

It's us who have to fight so that the comrades come!

They won't just come. But why do they come to get their pay...

at the end of the month and don't defend their interests?
Because we don't fight enough with ideas.

It's a sad thing, but it's true.

If we struggled a bit more to win over these comrades,

then perhaps we will not be a hundred fools having fun made out of.

Maybe we can get 500 steelworkers working, that's how it is.

That's why the commissions don't work as planned.

There are only a handful who work, that's the problem.

We've talked to them, we've been calling them for months.

We've been sucking up to them for months.

We've been asking them to give us a hand for months,

They aren't coming. And you are not going to get a rifle to shoot them, leave it...

But we must convince ourselves.

We can win the battle, we can have a left-wing government,

but we must convince ourselves, and to do it...

we have to convince the others.

Because, for fuck's sake, we are in a new situation,

a situation created out of Pompidou's death.

On April 6, 1974 Georges Pompidou dies.

It is then that Jacques Chirac has the idea...

that in order to make the gaullism of the future triumph,

the best way was to get Giscard D'Estaing elected at once.

And for the papacies, two chapels, to the left and to the right.

Advance without precipitation, towards meditation.

Nixon looks uncomfortable in the stairways of Nôtre-Dame, tribulated.

In fact, this entire collection of heads of state looks ill.

Power must be bad for your health. Just look at them.

Compare their expressions with the clear look of a cat. It's the definitive proof.

A cat is never on the side of power.

To prove it, consider the ceremony that the good...

king Baldwin of Belgium held every year in Ypres.

In the Middle-Ages, the people of Ypres was accused of adoring cats.

He's gone mad.

I can't do nothing but...

look at him growl and struggle.

He bangs against everything.

He didn't want to let me...

change his dressings.

Until a while ago, those who held the power oppressed and killed directly.

Today, death and madness can be a simple by-product of their activities.

In Japan, the Chisso company has poisoned the water of Minamata with mercury residues.

The fishermen and their families suffer from what they call simply, 'the illness'.

Deformed babies are born.

(Osaka, November 28, 1970)

(Chisso shareholders meeting)

Let the victims speak!

Let them speak!

Let your rage burst!

Resuscitate the dead!

CHANT OF THE VICTIMS OF MINAMATA

(The President of Chisso)

You are a parent, too.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

We are both parents.

Can you understand that?

Can you imagine what I'm feeling?

Stop smiling!

Parents have...

their children,

And the children have their parents,

Can you understand that?

To us, old people, without children,

everything is over!

(Watergate trials, 1973)

When it is the highest authority of the world's greatest power

sitting in the bench...

things are quite different.

Not a single demonstration in all of the United States.

Not a single popular intervention,

spontaneous or organised.

The most gigantic crack in the Power...

permanently contested during the '60s wasn't exploited by anyone.

(Larry Bensky)
The same people that had united to...

protest against the war in Vietnam...

now say we have to do something different at the same time.

Sometimes you have to look inside yourself.

You have to feel good vibrations, live in harmony with others...

to be at peace with the world,

I mean, with the environment, with the interpersonal world.

In the terrain of current affairs, maybe there aren't any demonstrations in the streets.

You no longer see political gestures like raising your fist all the time.

But the struggle continues...

and I believe people participate even more, each his own way.

They know how to work together.

And that doesn't mean great assemblies from dawn to dusk...

talking about Marx, Lenin, Mao without actually doing anything.

Now they know how to work together better than before.

It's something. Before it was terrible.

The famous and referenced movement of the '60s...

could have done something.

But it didn't have any knowledge of work methods...

which, for me, would have allowed for a much more effective work.

(October 1967. The Pentagon)

(Admiral Mohr)

Looking at these images, in retrospective,

You can identify the tricks the authorities played on us.

In practice, no unarmed demonstrator could pass the lines of the soldiers.

In front of us were the buildings of the Pentagon,

objectives of the 'direct action' to which the organisers called.

Then, when it was about to start,

surprise, surprise. No soldiers, no bayonets.

No steely looks. Just a few policemen...

that are pushed aside by some demonstrators that shout joyfully...

when they trespass a frontier no-one seemed willing to defend.

And everything stops here, at the stairs...

after a symbolic attempt of getting inside.

The police were clearly scared.

I filmed it...

and I showed it as a victory for the movement.

But, when I look back at these scenes again,

and I unite them with the stories the police told us...

about how it was they who lived the fire of the police stations in their 1968,

I ask myself: weren't some of our victories in the '60s...

made out of the same stuff?

By then all we knew was that it was only a way of beginning...

and, if we had in any moment the sensation of...

euphoria of the revolution that began,

it was false, it was tragic, but it was a great moment.

They say '68/'69 in the United States were like '05 in Russia.

That's good, because we still have 12 years to know if they were right.

The situation of the guerrilla today,

can be defined as of some recovery...

in comparison to the long and hard process...

of crisis, of hardships...

that it went through in these last years.

In 1970, after 8 years, Douglas Bravo is still giving interviews in the mountains.

He has no support.

Cuban or otherwise.

We could say that this crisis...

has its origins mainly in that...

in the first years of the struggle...

the movement used a tactic,

that we can call 'insurrectionalist'.

We wanted to make the revolution in Venezuela...

in the manner...

of the Russian revolution;

Storming the major cities in a few days.

Later, the Venezuelan revolutionary movement committed another mistake,

we could say that less so...

than in others countries in Latin America,

but nonetheless committed it;

Which was to apply...

the concept of 'Foquism'...

exposed by the philosopher and journalist Régis Debray...

in his book: Revolution in the Revolution.

(1970. Régis Debray in his Bolivian jail)
There's no doubt the struggle is hard.

Do you think it will go on?
Of course!

Maybe in different forms,

but it will always be the same struggle, at least in Latin America.

Don't you think that the coming decade will be different from the previous one?

Of course, because it will be another decade.

But the revolutionary struggle will continue...

in the way that each country, each nation, defines it...

specifically according to their tradition and national reality.

They will be as dramatic and hard...

as the ones from the past.

My action has no particular character.

I'd like it if it were part of a more general action.

For the moment I'm inactive, so the question doesn't make any sense.

Freed during a democratic interlude in Bolivia,

Debray goes to Chile to observe a process...

that seems to be the antithesis of "Revolution in the revolution".

Thus his need to ask Salvador Allende...

about his relationship with the Cuban revolution.

I arrived in Cuba on January 20, 1959,

I arrived at a very curious moment.

That afternoon there was a parade that was led by...

two hundred policemen from Miami, and in an open car,

went the mayor of Miami...

and I think that the mayor of Havana was also there

So the next morning I was considering taking a plane back to Chile,

When I met Carlos Rafael Rodriguez.

He asked me, "What are you doing here?", I said "I came to see this revolution"...

but given that it doesn't really exist...

Then he said, "You're mistaken, Salvador"...

stay here, talk with the leaders".

And he got me in touch with Raul Castro...

and then, immediately, I went to see Fidel.

We were in a big hall, and there were guajiros...

playing checkers, guns everywhere...

I have a photo somewhere.

I was close to a chimney, which was the only clear place

and there were the two of us talking.

From the start I was impressed...

by his overflowing intelligence, this incredible...

overwhelming thing which is like a human waterfall.

Here, Fidel is revealing the secrets...

of Italian cuisine to the Italian editor Feltrinelli.

Bechamel sauce, with meat. 5 stacks

Half an hour in the oven at an adequate temperature.

Wait, I forgot; On top of the bechamel, cheese!

Fidel had the ability of great actors to transform the accidental in legendary.

This gesture, for example, of moving the microphones,

born out of the need of keeping his hands busy...

when he was still an inexperienced speaker.

It has become a ritual gesture, which Cubans anticipate delighted before his speeches.

Only once did he find microphones which couldn't be moved.

In Moscow.

Long live...

proletarian Internationalism!

Long live...

the friendship...

between the Soviet and Cuban peoples!

Long live...

the Soviet Union!

The time will come when the revolution,

which is today a dynamic process,

that destroys the old and builds the new...

will institutionalise itself!

Neither we are eternal...

nor is this time of Revolution eternal.

The day will come when...

this new order the revolution is creating...

will acquire an institutional character.

And this essential and real democracy...

will acquire new forms.

Meanwhile, we have elections here every month...

but at the public square.

Here we could ask...

is anyone against?

Does anyone abstain?

Then, the resolutions of the congress...

are approved by unanimity!

(1975, Year of the institutionalisation)

(I Congress of the Cuban Communist Party)

Among the speakers: Mikhail Suslov.

Janos Kadar.

General Giap.

Everything is resumed in the Party.

It synthesises the dreams of the revolutionaries...

of all our history.

It specifies the ideas, the principles...

and the strength of the Revolution.

It absorbs our individualisms...

and teaches us to think in terms of collectivity.

It is our educator,

our teacher, our guide,

our vigilant conscience.

When aren't ourselves able...

to see our mistakes, our faults...

and our limitations.

(Mújica, Venezuelan Communist Party)
The Cuban case won't be repeated!

Marx said it, History doesn't repeat itself...

and when it does...

it is as a farce!

(Volodia Teitelboim, Chilean Communist Party)
We believe that after the Cuban Revolution

North-American imperialism was put into alert...

and it has set up in our countries...

an anti-guerrilla apparatus...

that cannot be easily overcome.

(Wallender, The Pentagon)

That's why the Chilean way...

which is the way of an entire people...

willing to do the Revolution...

is much better protected...

against an imperialist attack...

and more effective, as far as results go,

than the heroics of a few young men...

in a mountain or in a city to overthrow a government.

The government of Popular Unity that will take place in Chile,

that should take place in Chile,

with the designation of Allende as President of the Republic,

is not necessarily a government of Marxist ideology.

It is a government of unity...

that will include communists, socialists and radicals.

In our view, we consider...

(Lille, 1970. Georges Marchais)

the Chilean experience...

confirms the thesis of the French Communist Party.

This thesis is that the union of the parties of the left...

with a clear programme, with a clear perspective,

will allow for the formation of a Popular Unity...

strong enough to defeat the bourgeoisie.

I must underline that, after the triumph of Salvador Allende,

a few democrats...

some Christian-democrats included,

(First image taken of Allende as President)

at first hesitant towards the Popular Unity,

now offer their support.

This is the plain confirmation of the thesis of the Communists.

The union of the parties and forces of the left...

is capable of setting off, in a given country,

and I think it is our case, too,

a majority movement capable of defeating the bourgeoisie.

We salute this Chilean experience.

And what's more, let me say this.

Given that this is a very dangerous experience for the capitalists...

there's risk of pressure, even intervention,

specially of American imperialism.

I'm sure that if such intervention ever took place in Chile,

The French Communist Party and, I'm sure, the rest of the parties of the left,

will know how to take initiatives that lead to the full support of the French democrats...

to our Chilean comrades.

(Santiago, 1972. Allende meets with workers from a nationalised factory)

The good things and the bad things!

And now it'll be the same. For there are some journalists here; And I'm glad for that.

Chileans and foreign...

Let them stay...

specially the foreign ones.

So that they inform their countries,

and say that in this country there is a real democracy.

Which doesn't exist in countries which talk about it so much.

I've been here for two days.

I've seen positive things.

And I've seen negative things.

Negative things such as:

There's no direct participation of workers here.

Grave error!

You must correct that.

The production committees...

have as essential base...

to let any comrade know,

wherever may he work,

what is the task...

he and all those who work at his section have to fulfil...

in the context of the plan that has to be discussed, analysed, criticised...

in partial meetings...

and then at the General Assemblies.

On Sunday...

or Saturday afternoons.

Do you understand?

It's very sad to hear that when...

assemblies are called to study the Plans...

not many comrades come.

That shows a lack of political conscience!

And where does all this process of change...

to see a different society rest on?

The workers!

On the production, the productivity!

The worker who takes part...

understands that before he was just another machine...

or even less than that.

Today, he's a human being...

who realises that this business belongs to him...

because it belongs to the people...

and he is part of the people.

And its awful to think...

that there are workers...

capable of stealing from their own industry,

from a factory that is his!

As I realised...

that there was a rejection...

of those who don't work well...

and are paid as though they did...

and it's very good that it was said!

The lazy cannot live at the expense of those who work...

nor can they be rewarded.

There can be no political tag...

for he who defends someone unwilling to work in a State enterprise.

The Party's card...

gives neither capacity nor honesty:

Each has to earn the right of being respected!

Would it be acceptable if you said:

"Levelling out, or otherwise, strike"?

Would it be fair? No!

Would it be effective? No!

Will I send in the police...

to send you back to work? No!

Will I promote confrontations that mean workers getting shot?

No!

I have to speak to you, I have to explain things to you...

to make you understand,

and if reason is not enough...

nor is moral strength,

I'll have nothing else to do but leave.

What am I going to do? Stay calm while I see that in this country,

unless drastic measures are taken,

we'll loose ourselves in an inflationist spiral?

No, I can't do that.

So,

we have all the disadvantages...

of the capitalist regime, without any advantage of socialism.

We are in the middle, comrades, sandwiched.

Yesterday I was saying:

What a drama it is for me...

that when I drive by with three cars,

because of security.

Because there are those who'd like I didn't have such a good health..

September 11, 1973

(Last image taken of Allende as President)

(Beatriz "Tati" Allende
Havana, September, 1973.)

I'm not here to read a speech. I come simply...

to say to this fraternal people...

how were the hours we lived at the Moneda Palace...

the morning of September 11.

In this act of solidarity with Chile,

I would like to tell you,

what my father asked me to transmit to you,

those words he confided me under fire:

"Tell Fidel I'll carry out my duty."

On October 13, 1977 Beatriz Allende
will commit suicide in Havana,

like her father had done four years earlier.

Today, from this free territory in America,

we can say to our comrade-president:

"Your people will not give in!

Your people will not fold the flag of Revolution

The struggle to the death with fascism has began...

and will end the day we have a free Chile,

sovereign, socialist...

for which you fought and gave your life.

Dear comrade-president,

We shall win!

Two people impressed me...

with something I couldn't find in others: Their gaze.

Chou-En-Lai...

and Che Guevara.

In both there was an inner strength.

In both there was resolve.

In both there was irony.

Imagine now that the person who did this film in 1977...

(Paris, May 1st, 1977)
had the opportunity to see this images after a long interval.

It could be, for example, 1993, 15 years later; What youth lasts.

He could meditate about how time passes and look at what has changed in a very simple way:

Listing words that had no meaning for the people of the '60s.

Words like: boat-people, AIDS: thatcherism,

ayatollah, occupied territories,
Perestroika, cohabitation.

And this acronym, that replaced USSR: that no-one would recognise:...

C.I.S.

The communist dream is over.

Capitalism won the battle, if not the war.

But in a paradoxical logic,

some of the staunchest opponents
of Soviet totalitarianism,

these men of the New Left to whom this film is largely devoted,

fell into the same whirlwind.

(Portugal, 1974)
The left opposition died with Stalinism. They were dialectically linked,

like the scorpion and the frog in Orson Welles' film.

It was their character.

For the fourth time, the terrestrial arms exposition...

has taken place in Satory...

to promote the exportation of...

the most modern arms available.

One hundred fifty expositors present seven hundred pieces of...

military equipment to forty foreign delegations.

Thus, our author marvels at the ingenuity...

of History, which always seems to have
more imagination than ourselves.

He thinks of the ending of the film he finished in 1977,

where he compared the arms trade of the great powers...

with the plans carried out...

to try to keep the population
of wolves at an acceptable figure.

Guess who they are arming today...

However, there's one comforting thought;...

Fifteen years later, there are still some wolves left.

The real authors of this film, though they haven't been consulted...

about the use given here to their documents,

are the countless cameras, sound engineers,

witnesses and militants whose work relentlessly...

opposes that of the Powers That Be,

and who will not leave our memory.