'Working on the Atomic Bomb' by Margot JONCKHEERE RUIZ

My grandfather is 88 years old now. Before, when he was young he worked in the Navy. When he wanted to leave his job, he was hired by the CEA. It's the “Atomic Energy Commission”, he was in the department of military application. He was hired to be in charge of automatic telephone in the Sahara, in Reganne. It's located in the south of Sahara.

But there was no job in telecommunications for him over there. This happened in 1960: finally he participated and attended the first French test firing of a nuclear bomb at night. It represented eight times Hiroshima. My grandfather was in the firing console during the explosion. The firing console is a “big table” where the operators could stop the bomb or launch it. It was situated between 10 and 15 kilometers from the launch site. The firing was launched from a tower 100 meters high. He explained that once, he saw in real one of this test fired outside the firing console: it was really awesome! He worked here without preparation and training. But this place was more and more contaminated by these atomic bombs and he had to leave this site, two years later. The firing was made at air level and also at ground level. He went later to Hoggar in Algeria: there is a plateau at an altitude of 1000 meters called Tan Affela. There were tunnels in this mountain where they made underground tests. At this time, there was the Algerian War of Independence, so the company had to pay the FLN to pass because all the military convoys were attacked.

In 1962 or 1963, he went to Tahiti, to Mururoa where he participated in drilling. They descended containers which contained nuclear bombs. My grandfather had to make the orientation of these drilling if it deviates. He had to collect the information of the explosion by steps and calculations. All these missions were in secret. He wasn't allowed to speak about his job. There was a lot of spying, and members of the family or relatives were checked to find if there was a member of the French Communist Party or any connections with Communism: he would have lost his job.

This work allowed my grandfather to travel, but it was really difficult because of the distance with the family.

Yvette's Testimony by Alexia BOSQ

World War 2 was a tremendous shock for Europe and its citizens. Let me introduce you to the story of Yvette, a French woman who is now 78 years old. Hello Yvette, can you describe your life in 1939?

Yvette : I was 4 years old, my mother was a cleaning lady. She was Italian and migrated to France, to Modane (in the Maurienne), when she was younger. My little brother was born on 1939 and at the same time, my father died. That’s why we lived in a small flat, with my grandparents and my uncle. Then the war began.

Did you think the war would be long?

Yvette : No, we thought it would be short… But when their attacks were more and more frequent, we understood the reality. From 1940, we lived in a little flat, and when we heard the sirens of the town, we hurried ourselves to go in the nearest mountain. It was generally at night, so we came back downtown the morning. One day, in 1943, we knew that we would be bombed, according to an alert, a week ago. That’s why everybody in Modane went to another place. A lot of families accepted to put up us. My family and I, lived with a parish priest, It was better than our passed life… In reality, Modane wasn’t bombed, it was a false alert.

Did you go back to Modane ?

Yvette : Yes, we came back on September, we thought we would be in security. But the 16th, September 1943, we were bombed, again, and this time, there was no alert. The most surprising is the fact that it was the Americans who bombed us. They thought there were German Officers. Shells fell from the sky to all over the town. One of them fell into our flat. Happily we survived. A part of our flat fell apart. You can’t imagine how scared I was. I thought it was my last day alive. My mother and my Grandmother were wounded. A part of the roof and walls fell on them. But we all managed to run away through the window.

What happened to your family ?

Yvette : Guess what, a few days later, Germans arrived here. A German doctor came to us to heal them, in secret of course, he wasn’t allow to do that ! We were really surprised, but we accepted his help. Then we thanked him, and he said that we must go away. Imagine if his boss had seen what he has done to my mother and my grandmother… He would have been fired, or maybe killed, who knows?

So we went away, to hide ourselves in mountains… We were afraid of being killed. You know, living the war is dreadful, but when your grandparents and your mother don’t speak very well the language of the country where you are, it’s worse. So, we lived the end of the war like homeless people. It was awful. Sometimes in abandoned houses, sometimes outside…

Since this moment, I can’t sleep very well. Each time I hear a plane, I wake up. I can remember all the details, and I can still hear the noise of their steps…

A Critique of the Hungarian Film 'Just the Wind' by Laura Lassiaz and Manon Grandpaul

« Just the wind » deals with a Romany family composed of a grand-father, the mother, a daughter and a brother. The mother works in a cleaning company and she is so poor. We can see their everyday life but only one day in their life. At the beginning, we can see the daughter call her father to have a Skype conversation. He lives in Canada and all the family has to rejoin him but he doesn’t have enough money. She talks to him about her fears because, a similar family was killed the day before. We see then the day of the family: the mother goes to work, the daughter goes to school but she can’t stay here. The brother who spends time away from school time has to nothing occupy himself. With this day, we can see the extreme poverty which afflicts this family. They have a house without electricity and water. They don’t have any lights. The living conditions appear so difficult for us.

At the end of this day, the family goes to sleep and the daughter hears some sounds. Her mother answers “It’s just the wind”. This is the title of the movie. Then, they discover that it is not the wind but people who have a gun. At the end of the movie, everybody dies except the son.

'Just the wind' is denunciation without moralizing. We found this film very slow and boring, we felt no sympathy for the characters and so we quickly lost interest in their fate. A well studied production, beautifully filmed but with few words and a tragic story about people who suffer from insecurity and racism.

In conclusion, we follow 24 hours in the life of a Roma family discovering their appalling conditions made worse because they are excluded from other inhabitants of their village because of their nationality.

This film is an important message against racism.

'It's a Free World' A Summary and Critique by Margot Jonckheere and Jessica Da Silva

The film focuses on a  British woman who wants to create her own recruitment agency. At the begining of the film, we can see a scene where Angie is fired because she refuses to accept the avances of her boss. So Angie doesn't understand this decision because she thinks she is the most efficient emplyee working for this particular company. She feels that she is exploited by her boss.
That's why she threatens to sue her boss but instead she decides to create her own agency with her friend Rose. But Rose doesnt agree because she anticipates all kinds of problems like taxes, administrative papers... etc.. Rose thinks that they don't have the experience and the right contacts. Angie thinks it's possible: She's determined.
So, the two girls go to a pub and Angie explains her idea to install the agency in the back yard of this pub.
A few days later, they start their business: the concept of this agency is to recruit people who come  to the yard but they are not sure to work. It shows us the point of view of immigrant  workers. Ken Loach shows us their misery. It's really touching because we see this woman who has more and more problems because she wants to prove that she can create and manage her own company. She has more and more debts because she promises to pay her employees but the company where they work don't want to pay Angie.
She has many problems because she doesn't want to hire people who haven't legal papers. Immigrants are violent, they threaten her. This film presents us the real life, and we can see what happens in the world. The social inequalities and also the struggle of a desperate mother. She can't manage the education of her son, because of her work which takes a lot of her time.
After, her son goes to open the door to receive the pizza they have ordered. But her son is kidnapped by the immigrants, they also threaten Angie because they want to be paid.
During the film, Rose leaves the project with Angie because she doesn't agree with her behaviour. She continues the project alone and at the end of the film we can see Angie recruiting people to work in England. She is determined. This movie makes us sad and we can better unstand the inequalities in the world.

Summary and Critique of 'It's a Free World' by Clara Michellier and Léa Rodriguez

At the beginning of the film Angie is dismissed by her boss after she refuses to accept his sexual advances. She decides to set up her own recruitment company with her flatmate Rose. She asks her local pub manager Andy if she can use his backyard, which is both spacious and well situated, to collect her casual labourers before they are transported to the biulding site or the factory where they will be employed on short term contracts.

This movie shows that Angie is both a good and a bad example at the same time. Indeed, she is outlawed and does not think necessarily about the consequences and is not an exemplary mother. However, at the same time Angie has a strength of character after having rebelled against her employer, and she is a woman who persists in proving to the company that she is capable of taking her life into her own hands, of managing her company and that she is stable enough to get back her son to be able to take care of him.

'It's a Free World' A Summary and Critique by Lucas LETELLIER

IT’S A FREE WORLD

“It’s a Free World” is a British drama film directed by the famous film-maker Ken Loach that was released in 2007 in the UK.

Angie is an ambitious working class woman who is frustrated at working in little and low paid jobs. She has a lot of debts and she is not able to educate her kid, Jamie, on her own so he lives with his grandparents. She works for a British recruitment company in London that employs its workforce in the ex-USSR countries such as Poland. After a work trip to Katowice, she gets fired for no reason. She is 32 and as it is her thirtieth job since she started working, she decides to make a change in her professional life to reverse her insecure situation. Discussing it with her friend and also flat mate Rose, she decides to start up her own recruitment business with the help of Rose, in Andy’s restaurant courtyard. Rose is a bit reluctant as they don’t have any license but Angie promises her that as soon as they earn profits, they will make it legal. Angie also promises her friend and new colleague not to employ any illegal workers, only the ones from the European Union but under the pressure of the employers she works with, they start employing illegal immigrant workers and giving them fake passports. Rose isn’t too sure about that but she finally accepts. After one of the employer refuses to pay Angie and Rose’s twenty employees, the situation gets worse for the two businesswomen and Rose becomes more and more worried because some of the workers threaten them. Angie tries desperately to keep it running and one day she anonymously informs the police about a camp of immigrants to place her newly arrived Ukrainian workers. This event was too much for Rose and she finally decides to quit. Few days later, the unpaid workers kidnap her son and tie her up to receive their money. They find a quarter of what they were due and released her son. At the end of the movie, Angie completely gives up her scruples and goes further into the illegal recruitment of immigrants to get her out of her disastrous financial situation.

In this movie, Ken Loach shows the difficulties of people to have a decent work for both British people and immigrants. The expansion of the European Union to the countries of ex-USSR has given new opportunities for those populations but it has also made the competition disloyal for the West European workers and led to the exploitation of this new workforce. With the example of Angie’s situation and her will to succeed by employing illegal workers, paying them badly with no guarantee of work the next day, Ken Loach shows how some people can become immoral and forget their values to try to escape this situation.

“It’s a Free World” is great movie to understand people’s professional difficulties nowadays. Through Angie’s character, we both understand and dislike the choices she makes and this makes us feel uncomfortable.

Film review by German student

"Poupata" (Flower buds)

The Czech film “Poupata” is a social drama which shows a family living in an industrial area. Every family member has his own story and his own problems. The daughter becomes pregnant unintentionally and her brother is in love with a stripper and grows cannabis together with a friend. Both teenagers are without work and perspectives for their future. The mother is a cleaning woman and tries to improve their situation by earning and saving money. She has many dreams for the future, but her husband has no illusions about their life. He knows that he cannot change their situation and does not even try to.

The actors are likeable and the spectator can sympathise with them. Therefore the story seems to be authentic and touching. You can well imagine how the characters live and how hard their living conditions are, it could be a realistic example of a real family living in this area. However, it is sometimes hard to believe and shocking for the viewer to see the living conditions and their hopeless situation. He easily feels sorry for them and starts to think about how to help them.

But the ending arrives very abruptly and surprisingly. It is unknown what will happen to the family and how the situation changes. That might be a little bit confusing.
All in all, it is a recommendable film. The situation is shown in an authentic way and the viewer gets to know the situation of the family very well.

Written by Nicole Hartwig, Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium Letter, Germany