Classe de lutte/The Younger Generation(M+ Screenings: Beneath the Pavement)
Movie Name: Classe de lutte
Language: French(English subtitle)
Duration: 40min
Director: Groupe Medvedkine de Besançon
Story: Suzanne, a wife and mother, works at the Yema watch factory in Besançon, France. Overcoming her husband’s reticence and reprisals from factory management, she comes into political engagement as a workers’ representative and spokeswoman. Concise and strongly evocative of the female voice in the 1968 movement, this is the first film made by the worker-led filmmaking cooperative groupe Medvedkine, in which politically minded workers produced films with assistance or training from technicians and filmmakers such as Chris Marker and Mario Marret.
The groupes Medvedkine (established in Besançon in 1967, and in Sochaux in 1968) are unique not only in the history of French cinema, but also in French sociopolitical history. The groups consisted of filmmakers and factory workers who collaborated to make non-fiction films in order to depict conditions of factory life, expose the exploitation of workers, and advocate for worker interests. Initiated by Chris Marker, the groups also included Mario Marret, Jean-Luc Godard, Bruno Muel, and Juliet Berto.
Movie Name: The Younger Generation
Language: Mandarin(English subtitle)
Duration: 93min
Director: Huang Yu, Wu Peirong
Story: After the deaths of their parents, sister and brother Lan and Cow must take care of their younger siblings. Living hand to mouth, they struggle to overcome unscrupulous employers and unfair labour practices. The Younger Generation, with its humanist perspective on social justice, is the first film co-directed by the husband-and-wife team of Huang Yu and Wu Peirong, and stars Nina Paw, daughter of renowned actor-director Bao Fong, in one of her earliest roles.
Huang Yu (Hong Kong, 1916–2013) was one of the most prolific directors at Great Wall Movie Enterprises Ltd., a left-wing Hong Kong film studio that produced Mandarin-language films after the Second World War. In his decades-long career, Huang directed a variety of genre films, including Princess Hibiscus (1957), Hong Kong's first colour puppet-opera film.
Wu Peirong (Hong Kong, born 1926) worked at Great Wall in various roles. She co-wrote and co-directed three features with Huang Yu and directed Boyfriend (1979), starring Nina Paw.
Director
Cast
Release Date
12-05-2018
Language
Run Time
148 minutes
