Description of a struggle (1961)

Original title

Description d'un combat

Directed by

Chris Marker

Genre

documentary film

Country

France

Runtime

1h

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 14 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Chris Marker's documentary looks at Israeli society in the late 1950s. The film shows daily life in kibbutz communities and cities, while also noting social problems, ethnic divisions, and political tensions.

observationalcontemplativeneutralreflectiveeverydaysobermeditativegrounded

What happens

Third Side of the Coin (French: "Description d'un Combat") is a 1960 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker focused on Israeli society in the late 1950s, about 12 years after the state's founding. The film won the Golden Bear at the 11th Berlin International Film Festival in 1961. The film documents everyday life, from kibbutz socialism to bustling city streets, as well as reflecting on social inequality, ethnic tensions, and the ongoing Arab–Israeli conflict. In 2025, more than one thousand photographs taken by Marker during filming were found by Israel Museum staff at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris. The Israel Museum staff turned the photographs into an exhibit, titled "Chris Marker: The Lost Photographs of Israel." Marker himself tried to hinder screenings and distribution of the film, for reasons that later commentators assumed were not only artistic but political, the director feeling, according to them, that the evolution of the country was far from being what he had expected. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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