Film : Dare To Struggle Dare To Win, 1968 (96 min.) France

FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Directed by Jea-Pierre Thorn (France)
50th Anniversary of May-June General Strike France
In the middle of the May-June French General Strike in 1968 Jean Pierre-Thorn, a film student at University of Paris, takes his camera to the Flins Renault auto plant and ends up in the middle of the workers struggle during these events. This is an intimate and close-up look at the struggle of the French workers during that historic strike and occupation by French workers. We see how the occupation took place from the inside and the role of the students who also were supporting the occupation. The strikers not only had to fight the bosses but also the CGT (France’s largest trade union federation) and the closely linked French Communist Party (PCF), who were both opposed to the general strike. Also depicted in the film are the heroic attempts of as many as 5,000 students and workers from other workplaces and 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, so the street fighting in the small town of Flins takes on a similar appearance to the battles of the Latin Quarter in Paris, as local residents support the strikers and their supporters who came to show their solidarity. Following the film there will be a discussion.