La Commune (Watkins, 2000): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 12pm
This film is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.BFI introduction:
Watkins’ monumental account of the 1871 Paris Commune stages
revolutionary history as if covered by live television, with rival
broadcasts interviewing workers, soldiers and citizens. Shot in a
disused warehouse and developed collaboratively with its
non-professional cast, the film reveals uncomfortable connections
between the suppression of the Commune and contemporary inequalities.
Hailed as the culmination of Watkins’ life’s work, it is an unmissable
work that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
James Bell
Time Out review:
What looks likely to be the final film from the director of ‘The War
Game’ returns in style to Peter Watkins’ first feature, the provocative and
committed ‘Culloden’. He adopts a similar framing device – the
television presentation of a historical event – to explore the rise and
fall of the 1871 Paris Commune. Around 200 citizens from the relevant
districts reconstruct the events in a film that rigorously interrogates
media authority, political power and personal responsibility. Fluidly
shot in crisp monochrome, it builds a remarkable sense of popular
participation (reflected in its communal making) in a seminal historical
moment and deals head on with both how one makes a revolution actually
work and similarly how it is betrayed by hierarchical interests.
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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