Protest 1980

forty years ago, the inability of politics to respond to the demands of youth ignited a youth movement. street fights, meetings, an autonomous youth center and the call “down with the alps! free view of the mediterranean!” overtook the limmat city. although the zurich of the guilds abdicated, the call “we want everything, and we want it subito!” died away in the bustle of the “planetary work machine. “d’bewegig” came to a standstill, but the certainty that the world could also be different, better, freer, more emancipated, continues to have an effect.

today, millions of young people are chanting “system change, not climate change!” who are these people who drop everything and take to the streets for change? 1980? 2000? 2020? in “protest 1980” three generations of activists meet and, directed by the belgian michiel vandevelde, span the arc from the youth movement of the 1980s to the present. from seven narratives emerges a web of experiences, dreams and disappointments; a history of this city. where is this much-vaunted way out of the «steel case» of capitalism? between hope and despair, «protest 1980» turns the theater into a collective laboratory of political imagination.

with english subtitles

photos: ©miklós klaus rózsa