About

This screening will feature a 30-minute intermission between Part 1 (164 mins) and Part 2 (182 mins) of the film.

This time-bending epic by political provocateur Peter Watkins uses a pseudo-documentary form to restage the historical events of the Paris Commune in 1870, in which workers and intellectuals barricaded the city and set out to found a utopia. Shot in abandoned warehouse, the film captures an extraordinary event in which hundreds of contemporary non-professional actors were tasked by Watkins with researching nineteenth century French living conditions and developing their own characters. Passionately inhabiting their roles, they are filmed and interviewed by fictional state and rebel socialist news channels, whose contrasting interpretations of the unfolding events structure the film. Thrumming with the euphoric zeal of self-determination, La Commune deftly blends fact with fiction and history with the present, to stage an immersive, revolutionary critique of contemporary life and media.

Ages 15+ | Contains mature themes and coarse language