| Berkeley
in the Sixties
The Academy Award nominated documentary interweaves the memories of 15 former student leaders who grapple with the meaning of their actions. Their recollections are interwoven with footage culled from thousands of historical clips and hundreds of interviews. Ronald Reagan, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mario Savio, Huey Newton, Allen Ginsburg, and the music of the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez and the Grateful Dead all bring that tumultuous decade back to life. Its reflective
and insightful analysis of the era - from the HUAC hearings and civil
rights sit-ins at the beginning of the decade through the Free Speech
Movement, the anti-war protests, the growth of the counter-culture,
the founding of the Black Panther Party and the stirrings of the Women's
Movement - confronts every viewer with the questions the Sixties raised,
and which remain unanswered. KPFA
On the Air |
Academy Award
Nominee "A lively and
provocative look at protest and dissent...as vivid and astonishing as
any fiction to arrive on screen." "A riveting
but always thoughtful and sensitive portrayal of our history. I encourage
the widest possible audience-- especially young people--to see it." "Magnificent...It
is a film that deserves to be seen by anyone interested in a better
America. There are lessons here that cannot possibly be absorbed from
any other source." "A powerful,
evocative and poignant film that brilliantly recaptures the excitement,
the aspirations and the conflict of a turbulent era. Better than any
other single film, it illuminates the complex story of the '60s. Every
teacher of 20th Century American history will want to use it." "The best (documentary
on the '60s) that's been done to date...Makes it possible to track a
complicated arc in civilization and its discontents, underscoring the
era's unequivocal triumphs as well as its confused fade-out." "Imaginative
and realistic...As it was and as it should be remembered."
Producer/Director:
Mark Kitchell
Video
Purchase: $195
|
Six
years in the making and with a cast of thousands, Berkeley in the
Sixties recaptures the exhilaration and turmoil of the unprecedented
student protests which shaped a generation and changed the course of
America. It is considered by many the best filmic treatment of the Sixties
yet made. 
