Freie Arbeiter Stimme

Oyez. Retour sur le billet du 11 juillet, Kvetch, où l'on pouvait entendre, sur fond d'images non identifiées, la version yiddish d'une chanson associée au mouvement anarchiste américain. Ça nous tracassait. On se demandait d'où venaient ces paroles, quelles étaient ces images, tout ça.

Grâce à l'opiniâtreté combinée de Globe Glauber et du discret Xlanig, nous savons que l'auteur n'est autre que le militant et poète David Edelshtadt, dont la chanson, Vacht Oyf !, est disponible dans des versions différentes, sur au moins deux cédés: ici et là.

Les images d'archives du petit film ont été retrouvées quant à elles au beau milieu (minutage 24'15") d'un documentaire de Steven Fischler et Joel Sucher consacré à Freie Arbeiter Stimme (en anglais: Free Voice of Labor), un journal anar en yiddish publié aux Etats-Unis juqu'à une date récente. 

On trouvera sur le forum de Research on Anarchism un papier de Pietro Ferrua sur le film, et sur le site de l'excellent éditeur akpress, tout ce qu'il faut savoir pour se procurer le dévédé.

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« Free Voice of Labor : The Jewish Anarchists, made by Pacific Street Films, is a wonderful evocation of the radical political past and what has become of its activists in their old age. It takes it's name from the Yiddish anarchist newspaper, which finally died in 1987 at the age of 87. The film is an oral history, given by those who lived through the era. It's more than merely that, however. It uses clips from old movies, in Yiddish, that dealt with the ugliness of the sweatshop. You hear the Yiddish songs and poems inveighing against oppression and calling for the people to rise up.
But the joy in the film lies in the people who belonged to the movement. They have aged gracefully, with their sentiments unchanged, but with their world different in ways they would never have dreamed of years ago. They speak with humor of demonstrations, picket lines, battles of long ago. They speak as Jews, but secular Jews whose visions were of an unbossed universality. They are grandmas and grandpas, as sunny and mellow as any others, but their courage, intelligence and social concern still shines in their faces. They were a movement, mostly nonviolent, unlike the caricature anarchist bomb-thrower, but their families have grown into middle-class America. They no longer fight, but they still think." [New York Times]

Free Voice of Labour. The Jewish anarchists
Un film de Steven Fischler et Joel Sucher, USA, 1980, 57', Pacific Street Producion