Documentary released after 65 years

A documentary filmed by Jacques Panigel is being released on screens 65 years after its production. It attempts to visually recount the massacre of October 17, 1961, in Paris. The FLN had organized a peaceful demonstration against the curfew. Toll: more than 200 dead and injured whose numbers are unknown. Without images, all prohibited, the film invents another approach. An essential document.

Jacques Panigel’s background

Jacques Panigel is a biologist who played an important role in the resistance. Very politically committed during the Algerian war, he participates in the creation of the Audin Committee, named after a math teacher killed after torture by paratroopers in Algeria. It is with this structure of the Audin Committee that he makes a film on the massacres of October 17 between November 61 and spring 62.

Recreating the events

There were no filmed images of this day of horror. His major problem was therefore to find a way to make these events come alive to convey their magnitude and importance. Thanks to his commitment among Algerians throughout the period of the war, he managed to film interviews of men beaten by the police, even before 1961. Some speak of 1958, 59 and 60. And reveal the role of auxiliaries in Paris, the harkis, that the police used to infiltrate, arrest and torture their brothers.

Shantytown conditions

All speak of 28 rue de la Goutte d'Or, where in the basement incredible torture sessions took place in the middle of Paris. Notably the punishment of the bottle. Or of bleach. What historians will later call "the scandal of the singing caves." These interviews often take place in common, in small cramped rooms where the camera cannot take a visual step back. They are interspersed with shots of shantytowns which, today, leave us speechless! In the mud, families are piled up in heaps of cardboard, sheet metal, wood recovered. There is no water, just a few scattered fountains, and electricity seems rare. Children wade through filthy alleys, at the gates of Paris.

Reconstructing the demonstration

It is in the shantytown of Gennevilliers that Panigel makes the second part of his film. He reconstructs a meeting organized by leaders a few days before October 17. They are seen arriving two by two to avoid being noticed, in a neutral place (a small café in the shantytown?). They are five who listen to clear instructions: no weapons, no provocation towards the police. Women and children can come. They leave one by one.

The demonstration’s aftermath

The following part is less clear. It is probably the reality that was filmed, or a reconstruction. People are flowing slowly to go to the demonstration, on this morning of October 17. Men, with their Sunday suits, arrive from everywhere and begin a procession with an Algerian flag held by a woman. For the demonstration itself, Panigel takes some photos and a voiceover describes the horror. The complete absence of video documentation forces him to resort to this. It is also known that several attempts at capture were made, seized by the police and destroyed.

Survivors’ testimonies

Then meetings with participants who survived recount the horrors suffered by this peaceful crowd. Men thrown into the Seine, beating of everything that moves, corpses left on the ground, police brutality against children. It is the worst of this difficult narration to say and hear. Small children were beaten until death, thrown into the Seine to disappear. The police savagery led by Maurice Papon on that day reached the bottom of its barbarity.

Legacy and impact

Panigel will continue his active militancy and keep his responsibilities as an immunologist. His film is obviously banned. It is said to have circulated a little under the radar and was screened in Cannes and probably in Venice. The exploitation visa was granted in 1973 thanks to a hunger strike by René Vautier. But no distributor took care of it. Some screenings in confidential rooms in 2011, for the 50th anniversary of the event. Its current screening is therefore its first real release. At a time when police violence is still in action.