About Torr e Benn

Jean-Louis Le Tacon, Patrick Prado and a few others are students in Rennes and Paris, and Mao supporters at the beginning of the 1970s. They are Bretons and want to be active in the fight against peasant and workers’ struggles and against all the injustices of capital. The Maoists of the Proletarian Left had correspondents and emissaries in factories and in the countryside at the time to prepare for the impending revolution, but also to stimulate certain forms of struggle, such as plays or the use of cinema. This is how Jean-Louis Le Tacon filmed the long strike of the Joint Français in Saint-Brieuc in 1972 for what became the first film signed collectively Torr e Benn, in Breton: “break their heads! “Having realized the impact of the presence of the camera during the sequestration of the Joint’s executives by the workers, the collective specified its approach: to advocate an “amateur” cinema, in Super 8, interventionist during conflicts and demonstrations (the strike of the Kaolins de Plémet in 1973, the “Guern affair” against an appropriation of public space by a landowner, the March to Larzac in August 1973). Torr e Benn theorizes his practice, publishes forums in Libération, develops alternative systems of diffusion and public projections. After these militant years, Prado and Le Tacon continued their careers in documentary film and experimental video, while the example of Torr e Benn inspired the Ateliers de Création Audio-Visuelle (ACAV) in Brittany.