Rudi Dutschke

The film consists of four parts: Part 1 shows the founding of a new working group of the "Critical University" at the FU Berlin. Participants are students, workers, pupils, assistants and a university lecturer. The working group is founded to study the problems of educational advertising. Part 2 shows the campaign "Expropriate Springer"; the university administration of the FU Berlin refuses the rooms. The Springer Hearing takes place after all. Part 3 describes the Vietnam Congress, shows Dutschke's speech and a first approach to a counter-demonstration against the students. Part 4 answers Wolfgang Lefevre's questions about the next goals of the SDS.

Portrait of the spokesman of the student movement and extra-parliamentary opposition Rudi Dutschke, who died on December 24, 1979 from the late effects of an assassination attempt. The film is not limited to the mere biography of the extra-parliamentary politician, but also depicts the political environment as well as the late effects of the student movement. In retrospect, it condenses into a picture of a highly politicized society that had not yet begun its retreat into the private sphere.

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.