ISKRA

A series of 43 documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers and each running between two and four minutes. Each "tract" espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers' strikes and the events of Paris in May '68.

Six years after I left my country, Brazil, I was sent an old sound reel in the post and I discovered a recording of my parent's wedding ceremony. I was twenty-six. It was the first time I'd ever heard my mother's voice as she died when I was a year old. I was terribly moved and I decided to go to Brazil.

Recounts Ireland's history from British colonization to the territory's division in 1922, then from 1968 details a decade of events through images and eyewitness accounts of killings and such massacres as the infamous "Bloody Sunday" as the IRA argues their cause.

A documentary look at striking workers in a textile plant in Besançon, France, centering on interviews with workers about their motivations for becoming involved with the union and the struggles of their day to day life.

Pauline, Norah, Kristina and others wait for hours, sitting under a hut deep in the Bois de Vincennes. In front of the administrative detention center (CRA) in Paris, they have all come to see their loved ones locked up. Lives on hold, awaiting deportation or release. On this stage, these women tell their stories, talk to each other, share their experience, their revolt and their dreams with new visitors. They are the mirror of migrant detention, its reverse view.

Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat is an epic political essay tracing the rise and decline of the global left from the 1960s to the 1970s. Through archival footage and commentary, the film examines revolutionary movements in France, Latin America, and beyond, reflecting on the ideals, failures, and fading hopes of a generation.

The violent break-up of former Yugoslavia is described from the Serbian point of view, using the story of ethnically mixed couple in war-torn city of Vukovar as metaphor.

Composed entirely of still photographs taken by Chris Marker across 26 countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries presents a dialogue between three voices reflecting on the meaning of images and travel. Through this photo-essay form, Marker explores the relationship between still and moving images and the act of seeing itself.

In the 1968 movement in Paris, Jean-Luc Godard made a 16mm, 3-minute long film, Film-tract No.1968, Le Rouge, in collaboration with French artist Gérard Fromanger. Starting with the shot identifying its title written in red paint on the Le Monde for 31 July 1968, the film shows the process of making Fromanger’s poster image, which is thick red paint flows over a tri-color French flag. —Hye Young Min

In May 1968, workers, students and young people rise up against the morality and power of the establishment. Faculties and factories are under occupation. Barricades are erected. Paving slabs are launched. Words give way to actions. This is the confrontation. These images bear witness to the men and women who, in their indignancy, march towards their revolution. 50 years ago, as part of our ARC collective, we filmed the uprising of May and June 1968. Out of this material and scenes borrowed from our other filmmaker friends, we created this film.

In 1923 the scientist Von Dracula invented Vampisol, a drink that allowed vampires to live in the sun. La Capa Nostra and the European Vampire Group confront each other in Havana to control the Vampisol, but Pepe, Von Dracula's nephew, sang the Vampisol formula for free on Radio Vampiro Internacional. Now Pepe must face the Nazi vampires, who use the most powerful Vampisol: El Vampiyaba.

The mother and housewife of our time becomes involved in the Flag War.

On April 27, 1968, workers from the Rhodiaceta factory in Besançon gathered at the village hall of Palente-les-Orchamps to attend the screening of the film À bientôt j'espoir by Mario Marret and Chris Marker. This sound documentary reproduces the critical debate that followed. In June 1969, Pol Cèbe, the head of the Cultural Center of Palente-les-Orchamps, brought to this documentary a conclusion in the form of a report. Echoing an intense debate after the screening of À bientôt j'espoir, La Charnière by the Groupe Medvedkine captures those moments when workers expressed dissatisfaction with the way they were portrayed.

In a humanitarian camp opened in Paris, refugees are in transit. In this "first reception" center, they are resting from the street where they were stranded when they arrived in France. A few days of humanity, that we spend with them. But already, they have to face the Prefecture and hear the cold administrative sentence. We are always with them.

Marta and Karina are sex workers also studying to become lawyers. Filmed over ten years, this documentary captures their unlikely journey from prostitution to the defense of women's rights.

A class struggle " Music Video ", in which Colette Magny sings a song in honor of the workers of the textile factory Rhodiacéta, whose six-week strike in 1967 caused a stir

This film is a poem from Jean-Pierre Thiébaud, one of the workers participating in the Chris Marker-animated Groupe Medvedkine, and who took part in the 1967 Strike. It is a visual lyric, against war and capitalism, a call for emancipation.