MAI 68 - Photographic Exhibition

 Join us at the Alliance Francaise de Pretoria, Thursday 3 May 2018 at 18h30, for this thrilling look into the events that took place May 1968 in Paris with a photography exhibition, discussions and documentary screenings. Followed by a cocktail.

TThe late 1960s witnessed social and political unrest all around the world. It shook both the Eastern bloc (Poland, Czechoslovakia ...), the developed world (Japan, United States, Netherlands, West Germany, Italy ...), and what was then called the “Third World” (Egypt, Senegal, Mexico where a bloody repression took place). All these movements were characterized by an unprecedented youth mobilization. One explanation was the “Baby Boom” following the Second World War. Economic growth had also allowed a growing part of this youth to access higher education. And bloody National Liberation conflicts had revived ideological cleavages. The Algerian War had ended in 1962, the Vietnam War was to extend until 1975.

In 1968 a large part of the youth started recapturing the dream of revolutionary emancipation born in the nineteenth century. In the late Sixties, Skies Are Turning Red, to refer to the title of a 1977 film by French filmmaker Chris Marker. Small groups of activists started to contest everywhere the established authority, the consumer society, the power of capital, but also the betrayal and oppression of “real socialism”, and even in some cases the new elites born out of decolonization ... Reviews, leaflets, demonstrations, "happenings" shook the campuses and the streets of the big cities, sometimes followed by violent responses from the authorities.