Product Details

• Actors: Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Dorothy Healey
• Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English, Italian
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
• DVD Release Date: November 21, 2006
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HXDENK
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,412 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Internationale" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

INTERNATIONALE - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honoring workers, February 10, 2007

By 

Jeanni Tavlin (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Internationale (DVD)

This is a documentary that tells how a song has been used to honor the poor and working class all over the world. It has been translated into many languages and is still sung at many events. The images presented, as well as the interviews with Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg and Dorothy Healey, call attention to the plight of workers everywhere. It is the story of a song that, once you hear it, you keep hearing it in your head. A very moving documentary.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved It!!, March 25, 2007

By 

Katherine M. Downing "wobblykate" (Eugene, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Internationale (DVD)

Great Movie. Stirring, epic, all those things. Wonderful to see Pete Seeger, Archie Green and all the rest talking about this beautiful song and it's complicated history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The power of song, July 2, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Internationale (DVD)

This short documentary about the Internationale, narrated in large part by Pete Seeger and featuring interviews with a dozen or so activists of old and young generations and many nationalities, is both inspiring and informative. The film traces the history of the song from its composition in 1871, its adoption by radicals around the world as a call for worker solidarity and a new, more just world, its institutionalization by the Soviet totalitarian state, and its rediscovery by younger activists around the world today.

The co-optation of the Internationale by a brutally repressive regime is one of the great ironies in the song's history. Many of the older activists who were interviewed admit that, while they retain strong emotional bonds to the song, they're troubled by one of its lines: "No more tradition's claims shall bind us." Their point is that a the left movement whose signal song was the Internationale was in fact co-opted by a very pernicious tradition indeed.

That's why Billy Bragg, with Pete Seeger's encouragement, wrote a more recent version of the lyrics, one that, as Bragg says, tries to rescue the song from a rather dead iconic status and revitalize it for today's progressive movement. My only complaint with the film is that we were given only snippets of the new version. (But the whole thing can easily be found on the internet.)

The film's archival footage of the great depression, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, farm workers in the Philippines and U.S., dissident students in China, and young Democratic Socialists of America members is especially good. Highly recommended.