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.
(Cuban Television, October 1967)
Here are the other photos...
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