La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000)

Director: Peter Watkins
Stars: Eliane Annie Adalto, Pierre Barbieux, Bernard Bombeau, Maylis Bouffartigue

At 67, Peter Watkins remains a restless radical, creating films that spectacularly defy narrative conventions, entrenched ideologies and, it must be said, the patience of his viewers. Centered on the story of the Paris Commune, the working-class insurgency that briefly ruled the French capital in 1871, Mr. Watkins’s film is at once a provocative account of a neglected episode in social history, a call to arms against the contemporary injustices of capitalism, a critique of the mass media and an experiment in collective filmmaking that recalls the heady days after France’s last mass rebellion in May 1968.