Paul Carpita, 1955, 75 min.
In French with English subtitles
Preceded by La Recréation (Paul Carpita, 1958, 16 min.)
Introduced by Shanny Peer [+ video intro from French distributor]
Banned in France for nearly thirty years, Paul Carpita’s Rendez-vous des quais (1955) stands as a vital work of political cinema and chronicle of working-class life in postwar Marseille.
Carpita, a former schoolteacher with a deep commitment to social justice, set the film against the backdrop of the early 1950s dockworkers’ strikes in Marseilles, when the workers—discovering they were unwittingly loading weapons by day and unloading coffins by night—go on strike in opposition to France’s war in Vietnam. The film was censored for 30 years for its anti-colonial, anti-war message and open solidarity with the labor movement, and only rediscovered decades later.
Recently restored, Le Rendez-vous des docks has only been screened one time in the U.S., at MOMA.
La Récréation is a 1958 short film, never released in the U.S. and recently restored, focused on working-class children, that denounces the war in Algeria.
Shanny Peer is the Director of the Columbia Maison Française and co-curator of the Censored Film Series.
This screening is part of Columbia Maison Française CENSORED FILM SERIES - FALL 2025.
