The story of Clara Lemlich, a fledgling union organizer who launched the…
The Internationale
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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THE INTERNATIONALE draws on people's stories of an emotionally charged radical song (the long-time anthem of socialism and communism) to celebrate the relationship between music and social change, and to evaluate the uncertain fate of once thriving movements of the left.
The film chronicles the history of the song written in 1871, at the fall of the Paris Commune, by Eugene Pottier. The lyrics are a rallying cry for all the oppressed and exploited people of the world to rise up and overthrow their masters. After a melody was added a few years later by a French factory worker, Pierre Degeyter, The Internationale spread throughout France, Europe and the world.
Using rare archival footage, the film traces the development and meanings of the song before and after the Russian Revolution, during the Great Depression in the U.S. and the Civil War in Spain, and since the fall of the Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square, and the end of the Cold War.
The film includes performances and interviews with musicians and activists from around the world, including Billy Bragg and Pete Seeger, and people from the U.S., Israel, the Philippines, China, and the Soviet Union.
Exploring relationships between music, history and social change, THE INTERNATIONALE is a serious but often irreverent meditation on socialism, idealism, and the power of music in people's lives.
'An impressive performance! THE INTERNATIONALE traces the cultural history of the stirring anthem that has offered inspiration to social and political activists for more than a century now. Miller manages both skillfully and insightfully to document roughly the first hundred years of a worthy subject resonant with profound social, cultural, and historical value. A moving... and compelling film.'-Journal of Film and History
'HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for all age groups and classroom situations, as an example of the power that one song can engender throughout history and among different peoples and situations.'-Educational Media Reviews Online
'A beautiful documentary that shows the part music plays in social change. Awesome!'-The Michigan Observer and Eccentric
'[A] striking documentary! Tells the absorbing history of how one song can represent both freedom and oppression, sometimes at the exact same time.'-Michigan Daily
'What a remarkable film! THE INTERNATIONALE takes us on a lyrical journey from the Paris Commune to the collapse of Soviet Communism, from the slums of Kingston Jamaica to Tiananmen Square, in search of what might be the only song to change the world. If the song never moved you, I guarantee this film will.'-Prof. Robin D.G. Kelley, NYU (author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Race Rebels)
Citation
Main credits
Miller, Peter (Director)
Miller, Peter (Producer)
Toscanini, Arturo (cnd)
Peerce, Jan (Performer)
Meredith, Burgess (Narrator)
Sarton, May (Screenwriter)
Hammid, Alexander (Director)
Lerner, Irving (Producer)
Other credits
Editor, Amy Carey Linton; camera, Mike Harlow, Kevin Keating.
Distributor subjects
American Studies; Cultural Studies; France; French Culture; French History; History (U.S.); History (World); Human Rights; Labor Studies; Marxism; Music; North America; Political History; Popular Culture; Russia; Sociology; Western EuropeKeywords
WEBVTT
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Now let’s us all sing the international.
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This is the original French
of a famous socialist song,
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famous revolutionary song.
The words were written
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and made in 1871.
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Paris commune had fallen. A man, I
think, he was in his 40s at the time
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had been elected Mayor of one of the districts
of Paris but now he was fleeing for his life.
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He was in hiding. Eugène Pottier,
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I think that’s how he pronounced his
name, in that very month of May 1871,
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he writes six long versus and, of course, calling
on all the hardworking people of the entire world
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to overthrow their masters. And he was
quite confident that they would soon.
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[music]
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Few years later,
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the book happens into the hands of
a younger man, Pierre De Geyter.
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He led a course in his factory.
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And, I’m told, in a basement apartment
on his pump organ, he made up a melody.
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This young musician had a hit song,
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at least in certain circles.
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It spread throughout France,
it spread throughout Europe.
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He translated it in dozens of languages,
maybe hundreds of all languages.
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It was sung all around the world, still is,
by socialists, communists, anarchists,
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all sorts of people singing this song.
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The international, well, it
was tremendously exciting
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and, you know, have the clenched fist.
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We’d have these huge parades every May Day, but at
every meeting you’d open and close it with that.
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It was sung at meetings, at
demonstrations, at rallies,
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and on May Day, for example, when the people
would march. And the May Day demonstrations
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had to convince me, early on as a child, that they
would soon be socialism in the United States.
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The first May Day
demonstration I ever went to
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had about 10,000 people marching into the
Union Square. The second demonstration
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I went to had 20,000 people
marching into the Union Square.
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The third had 40,000 people marching into the
Union Square. I therefore became convinced
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as I sat down with a pencil and paper
than in a period of about 15 years
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the whole population of the United States
would be marching with the very same song
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singing the international.
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[music]
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In 1912, it was sung in
many different languages
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simultaneously by the strikers
in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
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The famous strike led by the war building. Big
Bill Haywood came up there to speak to them.
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Nobody thought they would stick together. They had
Irish, and German, and Italian, and Polish and all.
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And they all sang in their
own language this song.
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It became the official anthem
of the Soviet Union in 1917.
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Of course, I know this
song from my childhood.
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It was the most popular from all
songs (inaudible) in Russia.
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We played, of course, in the
revolution in our yard.
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And it was a big deal for us,
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because our fathers and mothers
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sang this song.
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And for us, it was a big
deal to repeat this song,
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more and more.
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[music]
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The first time I met the
international was as a young boy,
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13 years old, in Tel Aviv.
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I recall (inaudible) where
thousands and thousands of
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members of our movement (inaudible) marched
throughout the city with red flags
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and banners singing songs of work and labor
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and members of our kibbutz fought the… the
exploiters and participated in strikes
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and there were occasions
to sing the international
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and hopefully to build a homeland
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and a country where the workers
would be the people who would share
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the wealth of the country.
So the international
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spoke to me as a Jew, as a Jewish person.
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I woke up into this world and I knew the words of
this song. It was sang to me actually like a lullaby.
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And, you know, I was a baby, I didn’t know
the difference between Brahms’ lullaby
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and internationale. And
somehow I loved the…
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the internationale better
than Brahms’ lullaby.
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My father name is Van Feleo.
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And he was a titser(ph) and he
used to speak to the landlord
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in behalf of the farmers. And eventually,
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he had about 60,000 farmers, who
would come and listen to him
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and bring their grievances.
But he was all by himself.
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And then he heard internationale.
And then he decided
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that he would translate it into Pilipino
so that everybody would understand
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that there is hope, that there is a way
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out of this bondage,
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that there is a way for the
farmers to organize and be heard.
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And I could not understand
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why my father was arrested
and eventually killed
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for this song?
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But this song is a song
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that can be heard in rice fields. Young
boys riding atop their carabaos,
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going down the river,
women washing clothes,
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famers doing harvest,
this song will be sung.
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I dropped out of high
school in my senior year
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to go work in a cannery in San Jose to
help organize a union, which we did.
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And a strike was called, which was totally
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destroyed as a result of
extraordinary police terror,
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every meeting was broken up, every outdoor
demonstration was attacked and broken up.
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And then I went to the
Imperial Valley in 1934
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to help organize the migratory
lettuce pickers at that point.
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I was arrested and spent 180 days
in the Imperial Valley jail.
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And one of the ways in which I passed the
time was teaching my fellow prisoners
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how to sing radical songs.
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The strikers were prouder that the
generation of Mexicans who had grown up
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with the Mexican revolution so that both
the strikers and then the women prisoners
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also knew the international in Spanish.
It was just kind of a…
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an immediate means of communication, of
identification across language barriers,
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across country barriers, this song that…
that bridged all the countries of the world.
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[music]
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People everywhere were suffering from the depression.
There was real starvation everywhere in the world.
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In some countries like in
Germany fascism began.
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It was ruled by brute military force.
And based on this demagoguery,
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it was possible to achieve not
only power within Germany
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but strength within fascist elements all over
the world. In Spain, they tried the same thing.
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The military called for the overthrow
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of the Republican government
of Spain and staged a coup.
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[music]
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And from over 40 countries
volunteers began to arrive in Spain.
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Men and women could come and pick
up arms and fight the fascists.
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The first time that happened
in the history of fascism.
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And in the United States,
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the cry went up, “What about us?
Why can’t we go to Spain?”
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There was no way I was going to
stay out of this conflict in Spain.
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I saw action as an infantry man and
was wounded in the cause of it.
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And as a result of being wounded wound up in
a hospital at (inaudible). In the hospital,
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what we did for entertainment, of
course, was have entertainers come out
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and sing and a couple will do flamencos and things
like that. One day when they ran out of entertainers,
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and we had a fall back on our own resources.
The chief of entertainment called on us all
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to come up on the stage one at a time and
sing the international in whatever language
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was our own language. And
well over 40 languages
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were represented on the stage. Each one would
sing a few words in their own language
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and then go on to the next one or we
would have been there whole night.
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And then finally everybody sang the
song together in their own languages.
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So that we heard it sung in… in Javanese,
and we heard it sung in Tamil,
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and we heard it sung in Hindi and English and
French and German and Russian and Spanish,
00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:14.999
in every which language you could think of in more
and many, many more. It was sung in Yiddish as well.
00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:19.999
(inaudible), “Arise you…
00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:25.000
those of you who are slaves.”
00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:34.999
At least through the ‘20s, anarchists,
socialists, and communists,
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and perhaps other trade unionists
simply sang the international.
00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:44.999
But at some point, motion picture newsreels
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and then ultimately television began to
show Red Army parades in… in Moscow.
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Somehow in my mind
00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:59.999
the international lost
its early association
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of a general radical song and somehow
became a Soviet song. And for people
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.999
who rebelled in the tanks in Red Square
and the Mausoleum and Lenin’s Tomb
00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:14.999
and the scowling Stalin, you
know, the great father,
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I’m sure that the international was
very stirring. But for non-communist,
00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:24.999
the international began to
pick up pejorative overtone.
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One trouble making something official,
I think, is worse than banning it,
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it tends to cramp its style.
It was sung briskly first.
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Then they slowed it down to make
it ponderous. Phom… phaphom…
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Phom… phaphom… Phom…
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becomes very much an
establishment kind of a song.
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Well, I remember once I was at a (inaudible)
committee meeting of the Communist Party.
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And someone brought in a Jamaican reggae
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version of the (inaudible)international with all the beats, with
a little Bob Marley, with a little Jim and Cliff and so forth.
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[music]
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And I quite frankly duck it.
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But I can remember some of the
comrades, some of the older comrades
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and just could not understand how
this song could be best at us.
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There is considerable tension
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within the international
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based on a portion of the text. You know,
when Pottier wrote the international,
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he used the lines at least in
French roughly translated,
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”No more traditions change shall bind us.”
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The notion was that working people in
breaking with capitalism or imperialism
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would wipe the tablets clean. That is what,
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”wipe away the superstitions of the
past, the religions of the past,”
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and as free men and women, “in what
hale are you dawn, a red dawn.”
00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.999
But interestingly, you
cannot get your act together
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function with any passion if you
don’t believe in certain traditions.
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[sil.]
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I have an ambivalent feeling
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about the words of the song. On one hand,
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I… I still remain as moved as I was
when I was a youngster emotionally
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by hearing a stirring called a fight, a
struggle to challenge. On the other hand,
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uh… there is a sentence in that
song, “no more traditions change
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shall bind us,” that I had a
kind of ironic double-take on,
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:14.999
because I felt one of the problems with the movement
was that precisely traditions change (inaudible),
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and that all too often
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uh, concepts were accepted, went unchallenged
simply because it has always been accepted.
00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.999
[sil.]
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Arise the prisoners of starvation.
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You have been naught, you shall be all.
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‘Tis the final conflict.
00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
Shall be the human race! Bhum… phum…
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That’s my jazz to it.
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
The words that this would be the last battle, the
last war, something so many people have wished,
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does not come to like it.
00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
Many times when I sang this song,
I really hoped, I really believed
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that there would be a time
that there would no wars.
00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
That’s something maybe
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when we were young we could
sing without thinking twice.
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You know this song remind
me of my childhood
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when we believed in the
words of international.
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
And you can understand me
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when we remind of our childhood,
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it’s very important for our heart.
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[music]
00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
That is why when I hear now, international,
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[music]
00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
I feel the beautiful
melody again and again,
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
but I feel the tragedy too. It’s a tragedy
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
of my father.
00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
He was communist.
00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
And when he was very young,
he believed in this.
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
But he understood
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
that all this story, this is a false story.
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
And he told me about it.
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
That is why when I hear now,
international, the international,
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
my feelings is very complicated.
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
I feel in this my childhood,
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
but I feel in it the
tragedy of all our life.
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:58.000
[music]
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
The tragedy is that people
sang the international
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
went 1936 for Spain and many
have given their lives.
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
[music]
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
A tragedy is that
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
the people who were in power
in Russia, in Soviet Union
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
were not worthy of the cause
that people gave their lives to.
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
[music]
00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
I know that
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
it’s almost mission impossible
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
to try to
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
teach younger people all over the world
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
something about a time
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
that workers all over the world really believed
that they could stretch out their hands
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
for one another and work
together for a better world.
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:18.000
[music]
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
For justice thunders condemnation.
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
The first time I heard it, I was thinking to myself, this is kind of corny. We have a… a group
song, you know, that’s… that’s the first thing that went to my mind. Second time I heard it,
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
I… I heard the words and understood what
was going on and what the thoughts were.
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
And now when I hear it, I have 50 different
images that runs through my mind.
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
I may be thinking about the Abraham Lincoln
brigades fighting fascists in Spain.
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
I may be thinking about the people in Chiapas.
I may be thinking about people in Virginia
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
or elsewhere that are fighting for justice.
That song, you know, gave them strength.
00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:10.200
It gave them a feeling of being connected with generations before
them and with their brothers and sisters in… in other countries.
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
I don’t think any students who sang
internationale on Tiananmen Square
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:25.000
were thinking about communism or socialism.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
I think we’re singing internationale
to reassure ourselves
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
to feel that we are a part of a greater,
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:45.000
larger, propitious human
movement to us for friendship.
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
I never paid much attention to
the word of internationale,
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
but the melody of the song always
caused me into a very special mood.
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
And for a long time, I was thinking
what it is, and I think I…
00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
I sort of know it now. I think it captures
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
the essence of the traditional Chinese
thought, which was Confucianism
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
and their convictions of fighting
for what you believed in,
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
and if necessary they also
need to sacrifice themselves
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
and their sacrifice will
be rewarded in history.
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
“Let no one build walls to divide us,
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
Come greet the dawn and stand
beside us, We’ll live together
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
or we’ll die alone. In our world…” I came to
write a new version of the internationale
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
after being encouraged by Pete Seeger
at the Vancouver Folk Festival.
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
This was in 1989, just after
the Tiananmen Square episode.
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
And we were all aware that the Chinese students
had sang the internationale in Tiananmen Square
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
and that’s why we wanted to sing it at the… the folk festival.
So I said, well, I’d love to come and sing with you people.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
I know the British lyrics which are different.
And also so they’re very archive to sing.
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
So comrades, come rally, And
the last fight let us face,
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
The Internationale
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
unites the human race. I mean, it’s
an out song, it’s a very out song.
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
It has picked up a lot of baggage in the way. You know the
baggage of state communism. But I’ve… I have argued with people
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
that it’s the baggage that we need to get rid of
and not the actual spirit of the song itself.
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
So with this idea, I… I
wrote a few more versus.
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
”Stand up, all victims of oppression,
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
For the tyrants fear your might!
Don’t cling
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
so hard to your possessions, For you
have nothing if you have no rights!
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
Let racist ignorance be ended…”
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
I think we’re at a time in now in our politics where we in a…
in an interesting position where it stands to this generation
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
to redefine what socialism and what
communism means in a post-Marxist sense.
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
And I think reevaluating the old
culture is important. And when we find
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
something that still has meaning as a…
almost as an icon, the internationale,
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
I think it’s a good time to… to perhaps
take it away from being an icon and…
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
and put some new lyrics on it and see… see if it… if
it can translate into the… into the 21st century.
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
”So comrades, come rally,
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
For this is the time and place!
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
The international ideal
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
Unites the human race.”
00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
[music]
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
All one has to do
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
is look around the world today, not
only economy that is in crisis
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
everywhere in the world. To know that
those struggles haven’t stopped,
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
that the shape of those
struggles continues as a…
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
as a fierce struggle for justice. And
as long as that struggle is there,
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
and it will be there,
the… the dream of a world
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
in which man’s exploitation
of man will end,
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
when the inhumanity of humans to humans will…
will cease, when oppression will disappear,
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
is the strongest dream.
And unless one dreams
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
beautiful dreams, one
lives a very dismal life.
00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
But that there will someday be again
a movement throughout the world
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
that stands up and says, we are for a world
in which the exploitation of human beings
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
can no longer take place, that dream I
am sure will be revived and relived.
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
And if there is a world here,
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
a hundred years from now,
I’m not sure there will be.
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
If there is a world here, this
song will be part of that world.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
And the socialist dreams
of making one world
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
out of many peoples,
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
in some way will have to come to pass. When
we fight, provoked by their aggression,
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
Let us be inspired by life and love.
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
For though they offer us concessions,
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
Change will not come from above!
00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
So come brothers and sisters,
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
For the struggle carries on.
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
The Internationale
00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
Unites the world in song.
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
So comrades, come rally,
For this is the time
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
and place!
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
The international ideal
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
Unites the human race.
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:38.000
[sil.]
Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 30 minutes
Date: 2000
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Grade: 9-12, College, Adult
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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