Skupina Medvědkin (France)

Between the March strikes in 1967 at Rhodia in Besançon and work standardisation at the Peugeot factories in Sochaux, there occurred – under the impetus of Chris Marker and his friends – the constitution and action of the “Medvedkin Groups” for producing, directing and distributing political films.What about these films? Rising up against total lack of action, dreams realised of a meeting between workers and intellectuals, moving around from Paris - province - province - Paris, true values of discussion opposed to ordinary discussion of commercial value, return of the camera to the factory after years of absence (since probably about 1936), incarnation of belief in the power of cinema, in its ability to change the world, at least the images of the world, critical images and critical of images. Idea (or utopia) that the cinema is not always behind the times and that it can sometimes like the brother Lumière’s locomotives or the Medvedkine cine-train just arrive on time and exceptionally ahead of time. Thus, À bientôt, j’espère – title slogan dealing the ruling class a real blow – the first film in the series was shot six months before May 1968 and shown in April.