Berkeley in the sixties movie. Berkeley in the Sixties (1990) English Movie 2019-01-09
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Film review: Berkeley in the Sixties
Also represented in this documentary are the fledgling black power and women's movement of that era though no mention is made of the movement for gay tolerance and acceptance which saw its first public demonstration outside the White House in the middle sixties by then government workers. Most of the many millions of us on college campuses during that time were forever changed -- for good, for ill, or both. The eruption of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1950s along with the rise of the New Left out of the anti-communist repression of the McCarthy Era provided the political narrative. The film opens with an incident in 1960 a demonstration against the House Un-American Activities Committee which was ironically publicized by a government propaganda film intended to paint the incident as negative. Berkeley was at the epicenter as the counterculture politics of the '60s emerged. It is now almost three decades since this film was produced and 50+ years since the events depicted. Not only were the students ready to break out, so were composers, painters, theater people, artists of all kinds along with young people of many colors who decided not to be tracked into jobs, home, and apple-pie roles.
In a country where selfishness and greed have become terminally entrenched, the sixties deserve honest remembrance as a time of mockery, love, sharing, nonconsumerism, and antiwar militancy, along with some adolescent chaos. All in all, definitely a film worth seeing. That's a whole lot for one film to do, even for someone who respects and loves film as our culture's greatest current art form. Most of the many millions of us on college campuses during that time were forever changed -- for good, for ill, or both. As a student of American History, this is certainly one of the most interesting films I've had the opportunity to view. Anecdotally, Corry and I at one time managed to confuse ourselves between the Yellow Brick Road band that feature Jeannie Piersol who was also in the very first incarnation of The Great! Though it is structurally a simple-minded documentary, alternating talking heads with historical news footage, it's filled with enough memories to make initially appealing sense. From varying perspectives, our entire culture experienced it, and was affected by it.
No simple valentine to student-demonstration days, the film brilliantly uses contemporary perspective to show how great legacies and inevitable failures were simultaneously born in a charged atmosphere. The number of impressive clips used to illustrate each phase is quite amazing, the result of six years' work as the filmmakers put it all together, and some was found in rather unlikely places, such as a People's Park segment that was located in Finland. Meanwhile, the documentary does proffer considerable support for the premise that a substantial contingent of the anti-war movement of the late sixties did itself arrogate authority through its priviledged status in society to browbeat those whose worldview on the righteousness of that admittedly hideous war markedly differed from their own. Then came gatherings in favor of civil rights, the Free Speech Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests, followed later by women's rights and Black Panthers, before it all seemed to dissipate around 1970. And while some might be thankful that they didn't try to support their simplistic sociological approach with deconstructive or semiological jargon, they could have used the more handy and historically appropriate cultural critique of the Frankfurt School Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer-not to mention Leo Lowenthal, who still lives in Berkeley.
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To what extent was it a social movement almost more than a political one? There are great extended cuts covering many of the key events of the period. This outstanding documentary by Mark Kitchell, six years in the making, is a comprehensive and insightful story of campus and community activism as born at the University of California at Berkeley. Davis is not a fan of this film, and states clearly his reasons why. The film is dedicated to Fred Cody, founder of Cody's Books. The eruption of the psychedelic avant-garde, itself heir to a radical arts tradition in the American Left, provided the cultural narrative.
An interesting line-up that sees Chocolate Watchband offshoot Tingleguid perform. How did it relate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago? The women's movement was at first a reaction to the second-class status of women and girls in the anti-war, anti-draft movement, but took on a whole package of issues of its own. Furthermore, financial restrictions are evident, as with the music being somewhat limited but that seems to have just inspired Kitchell's sense of creativity. Producer-director Mark Kitchell also does an admirable job of at least attempting to show both sides of many of the issues, though sometimes, without any special prompting from the film's structure, the Right looks fairly foolish. And, as we watch activists for human rights and democracy around the world challenge the powers that be, we know that each generation has the chance to make change and that no generation can do it alone. It's well preserved and brain dead. Kitchell's sympathies are clear, but this is not a one-sided interpretation.
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This film focuses on the often-less-understood, and fascinating, politics of the time. Kitchell was certainly not riding a wave of nostalgia for the '60s, which during the Reagan and Bush presidencies became regarded as the era in which America lost its way. The free speech movement eventually won its point for the most part, then turned its attention to ending the war in Vietnam, and specifically to disrupting the draft board. The film kept my attention and was very educational. But apart from the interviews, I especially loved the vintage footage.
Berkeley was at the epicenter as the counterculture politics of the '60s emerged. The following Sundays we see Mad River, Santana Blues Band, Mt. The autumn of 1967 was a turbulent time for Country Joe and the Fish - they had completed an East Coast tour in August and very early September and had returned to the Bay Area to play what appears to be a single show in Canyon with Johnny Talbot and da Thangs and the Grateful Dead. As soon as you give them a park, they'll dream up another confrontation. The film was released in 1990 and contains interviews with everybody from members of the Black Panthers to Country Joe and the Fish. Combining newsreel footage with interviews with some of the main figures of the protests, documentary filmmaker Mark Kitchell sheds light on the first, galvanizing stirrings of the Free Speech Movement and its subsequent influence on late-1960s radicalism. The commentators are all people who were involved in the 1960s; there are no independent voices of historians or journalists or whatever.
Previous Sundays had recently seen the likes of Kaleidoscope, Charlie Musselwhite and the Incredible Fish. The determination and spirit of those who resisted are perhaps more relevant today than in 1990. Director: Genres: Production Co: Kitchell Films, P. And some people are not as readily identifiable as others superimposed names might have helped. From the footage of Mario Savio's arrest at the Regents' forum to the interviews with former Black Panther leaders and also Vietnam draftees, there is a lot of raw human emotion and reaction captured on tape. This film does that very, very well.
The film features 15 student activists and archival footage of Mario Savio, Todd Gitlin, Joan Baez, the Rev. But what makes the film great for me is its clarity in reflecting the interplay of counterculture themes: the movements for free speech and for civil rights, the movement against the Vietnam War, and assertion of the new feminism. Although a documentary, this video is amazingly easy to watch. There were two historic movements that fused into the counter-cultural values that challenged the materialism of dominant society. All of the above do not fit into the cast of scrubbed-up student activists, nor were they engaged only in civil liberties issues, and most important, none was above or beyond the Cold War. Then the Black Panthers reacted to the failure or at least the limits of non-violence. The film's music is a further evidence of a tepid interpretation of the events chosen; it too eradicates any traces of the radical wild or chaotic in favor of a kind of liberal musical tourism.
The movie does spend considerable time on civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War protests in nearby Oakland -- important and interesting, though it takes focus away from what the title promises: a look at Berkeley in the Sixties. This is a superb, valuable documentary. It is stronger on the early years and its highpoints than on the end of it and its ongoing influence, but nonetheless you get some great video footage. The result is, as you might expect, rather one-sided but still quite fascinating, regardless of which side you may have been on at the time. But what makes the film great for me is its clarity in reflecting the interplay of counterculture themes: the movements for free speech and for civil rights, the movement against the Vietnam War, and assertion of the new feminism. While one does see 1960's luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr.
