History

Comrades, the golden age of the French communists...1944-2004

If one page in the history of French society seems to have been turned over for good with the advent of the 21st century, it is that of communism. The communist electorate collapsed, the Party lost its social bearing, and a whole universe broke down.
However, it was not so long ago that French communists made up a counter-society. At that time PCF, the French communist party, was the biggest in France, with its own offices, departments, and cultural and sporting organizations: its own regional newspapers and its untouchable bastions, from the Greater Paris belt to the Red South, from the northern region of Lille to the southern one of Limoges. Going into the ´Party´ was like going into religion. It had its own heroes, legends and myths. You were either for or against it.
Sixty years of communist life in France is shown and illustrated in this documentary, supported by exceptional archive documents, militant films, songs, previously unseen reports from the famous faces of the time, and enriched with interviews of militant families - miners from the southern ´Gard´ region, agricultural workers from northern ´Haute-Vienne´ and railway workers from the Pas-de-Calais region bordering the English Channel, to name but a few. This is a collective and intimate adventure, it is the sum of many fates, by turns moving, funny and cruel, which helps to show the rites and values of France at a certain time, shedding light on the ´comrade´ culture.