La Commune (Paris 1871)

Noted filmmaker and media critic Peter Watkins directs this mammoth six-hour-long look at the legendary Paris Commune of 1871. Following the humiliating defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, the reign of Napoleon III collapsed in the resulting public foment. While a new regime headed under the Government of National Defense tried to shore up power, a band of commoners took the reigns of power for themselves and created the Paris Commune, a government defiantly separate from the state...