Les Années 68 (Sixty-Eight: Ten Years that Shook the World)

In 1968 a wave of student protests broke out across the world. Drawing inspiration and breath from the Civil Rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War, the youth rose to reject the social, political, and cultural premises of the world as it had been recreated following the Second World War. Through protest they aspired for a new society and aired their criticism of the established way of life, deemed colonial and authoritarian, fixed and hierarchical, liberticidal and moralizing. How do we look at this global movement fifty years later? What could be this bygone era’s legacy, its resonances? The recent uprisings in the streets of major cities (Paris, London, Rome, Dakar, San Francisco, Beirut, etc.) are countless, so much so that the little Parisian May of 1968 seems almost anecdotal. Imbued with the fever of the decade, this film revisits this moment of global change and tells the story of the euphoria, rush, and violence of these years when everything seemed possible, and whose legacy still divides people.

Screening at Row House Cinema.