A young actress becomes politically aware within the Paris Commune of 1871.
Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers an analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts, memory and the past. The film focuses on the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who observes, 'I think cinema, when it's not boring, is the art of letting ghosts come back.' He also says that 'memory is the past that has never had the form of the present.'
Zina, the daughter of Leon Trotsky by his first wife, is undergoing freudian analysis in Berlin in the 'thirties. Meanwhile Trotsky is in exile in Prinkipo having been driven from power by Stalin. The Nazis rise to power in Germany and Austria and Zina commits suicide.
