La Commune (Paris, 1871) Another Peter Watkins for you. I had to turn the english captions on, FYI. From Rotten Tomatoes:
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 operating under a sort of proto-Marxist ethos. Inevitably, the Commune was brutally suppressed by French troops. Watkins’ treatment of the event juxtaposes the present with the past – modern day CNN-style reporting with historical fact.