Film about May-June 1968 in France: "Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win"

Red & Black and Mouvement Communiste present a film screening, to be followed by discussion, of:

Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win

By Jean-Pierre Thorn, 1968 (96 minutes; English subtitles)

Thorn was a French film student who took his camera into the factory in May and June of 1968 to capture this cinéma vérité classic of the worker occupation of the Flins Renault plant and the struggles around it. The strikers had to fight not only the bosses but also against the CGT (France's largest trade union federation closely linked to the PCF) and the French Communist Party(PCF) to maintain it. Also depicted are the film are the heroic attempts of as many as 5,000 students and workers from other workplaces and other regions to reach the factory in its rural location to support the occupation. The police, also numbering in the thousands, attempted to block them from reaching the factory and the street fighting in the small town of Flins takes on a similar appearance to the battles of the Latin Quarter in Paris, as the local residents support the strikers and their supporters who came to show their solidarity. This is a powerfully moving film; discussion will follow.