![]() The film is also intended as a little slice of social history. These were key formative moments in their protagonists’ lives. Marczak and his crew followed the friends on their night-time for over a year, for “two summers and a winter”, as he puts it. “This has been happening in cinema for a long time,” he says. Security forces have intervened only when a small group of rioters tried to reach Prime Minister Manuel Valls’s nearby home on Saturday.He adds that other directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Winterbottom and Robert Flaherty have also combined documentary and dramatic techniques in the same way. The government has taken a mostly hands-off approach despite a nationwide state of emergency in force since last November’s deadly Paris attacks. Police moved in to clear the square peacefully early on Monday, but the protesters were back by the evening. The ‘Nuit Debout’ movement has pitched its tents and built its stalls around that shrine, still festooned with candles, banners, graffiti and flowers.įor Viavoice’s Miquet-Marty, while ‘Nuit Debout’ is too disorganized for now to threaten the system, “it would be dangerous for the government to let it get bigger.” Place de la Republique had become an improvised shrine and a symbol of national unity where huge crowds rallied after last year’s Islamist attacks in Paris. Participants point to another issue they say the movement needs to remedy: the protesters are overwhelmingly white students and workers from central Paris, and few come from France’s under-privileged, ethnically diverse suburbs. When the sound system goes down, all those within hearing range relay the speakers’ words by shouting to those at the back of the square. There are committees to discuss specific issues and a daily general assembly at 6 p.m., where all are free to speak but must register first and respect a time limit. ![]() “It is really uplifting to see so many people around me who want something else, even if it’s not quite clear yet what that something else is,” said Clementine, who works for a non-governmental organization. There is no defined platform beyond widespread anger at the government’s pro-business reforms. ![]() The ‘Nuit Debout’ protesters agree only that they want change. ![]() He and others explained that this is to avoid appearing as spokespeople of a movement that insists it is leader-less even if it a few high-profile activists, including an economist and a documentary filmmaker, helped launch it. Like all those interviewed on Monday night, Victor declined to give his full name. They’re just trying to halt the momentum.” “When they (the government) say that they’re working for young people, it’s a huge lie. Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and Spain’s 2011 Indignados street sit-ins, “Nuit Debout” unites the discontented in a mostly joyous hubbub of debate on everything from rewriting the French constitution to protesting against police violence and labor reforms. The “Nuit Debout” or “Up all Night” movement began on March 31 when a group of activists decided not to go home after a march against labor reform, said 35-year-old Simon, a theater worker and one of the volunteers who greets newcomers.Ĭrowds ranging from several hundred to a few thousand have gathered every evening since then for a spontaneous happening that is a mixture of street theater, party and ritual initiation for a new generation of activists. Street protests are hardly a novelty in the homeland of the 1789 French revolution and the May 1968 student-worker uprising.īut the occupation, night after night, of the vast square by left-wing and anarchist young people is a novel form of snowballing action that is giving President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government sleepless nights. ![]() Supporters of social media-driven movement "Nuit Debout" (Up All Night), gather on the Place de la Republique in Paris, France, against a French labour law proposal, April 11, 2016. ![]()
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