![]() The film, Schäublin’s second feature, is a dramatization of the anarchist’s time in the Swiss mountain town of Saint-Imier. Swiss director Cyril Schäublin’s Unrest opens with a shortened version of that Kropotkin quote. The experience solidified his political commitments: “The egalitarian relations which I found in the Jura Mountains, the independence of thought and expression which I saw developing in the workers, and their unlimited devotion to the cause appealed far more strongly to my feelings and when I came away from the mountains, after a week’s stay with the watchmakers, my views upon socialism were settled. (Nadar / Gallica Digital Library via Wikimedia Commons) These anarchists were not mere followers of one leader or another: as he wrote in a reflection on this visit, “there was not a question upon which every member of the federation would not strive to form his own independent opinion.” Portrait of Pyotr Kropotkin. They were largely employed in the watchmaking trade, and Kropotkin theorized that the organization of the delicate work created a high level of intellectual development among the workers. In those mountainous valleys, Kropotkin spent time with revolutionary workers, members of the anarchist Jura Federation. A succession of small towns in the hills of the Jura Mountains were home to the first-ever International Anarchist Congress in 1872. The Switzerland leg of his journey was pivotal. ![]() ![]() He set out for a three-month trip to Europe. In 1872, influenced by the rising wave of revolutionary activity (in particular, the Paris Commune) he decided to put his studies aside and investigate the workers’ movement himself. ![]() Unrest opens on May 5 in New York at Film at Lincoln Center and on May 19 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Santa Monica.īefore Pyotr Kropotkin became synonymous with the anarchist movement, the Russian aristocrat was a cartographer, working for the Russian Geographical Society. ![]()
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