[D66] Docu: IN THE INTENSE NOW

[A.O.]

http://www.space538.org/events/intense-now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=171&v=SNtArvpjI2s

Film
IN THE INTENSE NOW
USM Philosophy Symposium Film Series
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Made following the discovery of amateur footage shot in China in 1966 
during the first and most radical stage of the Cultural Revolution, IN 
THE INTENSE NOW speaks to the fleeting nature of moments of great 
intensity. Scenes of China are set alongside archival images of the 
events of 1968 in France, Czechoslovakia, and, to a lesser extent, 
Brazil. In keeping with the tradition of the film-essay, they serve to 
investigate how the people who took part in those events continued 
onward after passions had cooled. The footage, all of it archival, not 
only reveals the state of mind of those filmed—joy, enchantment, fear, 
disappointment, dismay—but also sheds light on the relationship between 
a document and its political context. What can one say of Paris, Prague, 
Rio de Janeiro, or Beijing by looking at the images of the period? Why 
did each of these cities produce a specific sort of record?

Narrated in first person, the film reflects on that which is revealed by 
four sets of images: footage of the French students' uprising in May of 
1968; the images captured by amateurs during the invasion of 
Czechoslovakia in August of the same year, when forces led by the Soviet 
Union put an end to the Prague Spring; shots of the funerals of 
students, workers, and police officers killed during the events of 1968 
in the cities of Paris, Lyon, Prague, and Rio de Janeiro; and the scenes 
that a tourist—the director's mother—filmed in China in 1966, the year 
of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Part of the USM Philosphy Symposium Film Series.  Followed by discussion.