Saturday,
June 6 at 7pm
People’s
Park and Other Protest Films of the 60’s
Co-presented
by Jack Stevenson
40
years ago in May of 1969, People’s Park in Berkeley erupted
into deadly protest, bringing into focus issues such as the
concept of private property, civil disobedience and police brutality.
We mark this anniversary by presenting People’s Park
and three shorts that more broadly reflect the spirit of protest
and alienation that marked the decade. These films impart
a feel for the attitudes and ambiguities of the times and form
a telling portrait of a disenchanted generation that 40 years
ago was on the brink of exploding into pieces.
Assembly
Line
dir.
Morton Hellig, US, 1961, 16mm, 30 mins, b/w
This
intimate and starkly photographed narrative tells the tale of
factory worker Eddie Ryan who throws himself into the neon glitz
of downtown Philadelphia on his night off, thinking a wallet
full of cash will buy him excitement, companionship and meaning
in life. To his distress he finds all the invites and come-ons
to a good time are a con and a fraud – he can spend his money
but it buys him nothing, and he manages to connect with no one.
America’s
in Real Trouble
dir.
Tom Palazzolo, US, 1968, 16mm, 15 mins, color
This
free-wheeling reportage from the street captures all the disconcerting
contrasts of patriotic Vietnam-era parades as they move in lock-step
through the poverty-ridden ghetto of Chicago’s Near Northside.
The soundtrack is exclusively composed of music that was heard
over the radio that very same moment in time, mostly country
songs that celebrate the conservative virtues of God and Country.
The result is an unmediated “snapshot of the moment” that resembles
a home movie in its naive pacing and composition; but it is
precisely this casual and spontaneous approach that manages
to capture the mood and mentality of the day more effectively
than all the staged Hollywood spectacles.
People’s
Park
The
San Francisco Newsreel Group, US, 1969, 16mm, 25 mins, b/w
This
fiercely partisan version of the People’s Park story captures
not only the famous incident – the street battles between the
people of Berkeley intent on defending a park they created and
the police and national guard acting on behalf of the property
owners – but also a radical style of filmmaking that sought
to shed light on aspects of the story ignored by the major media
outlets. This is protest cinema at its most compelling.
Love
It/Leave It
dir.
Tom Palazzolo, US, 1970, 16mm, 15 mins, color
This
film fluidly weaves sound and image together to create a hallucinatory
montage of urban America at the height of anti-war demonstrations.
Equal parts totalitarian nightmare and candy-coated consumer
fun fair, like most of Palazzolo’s work, it’s devoid of overt
editorial comment and full of ambiguity – a searching to capture
the spirit and times and people without imposing the filmmaker’s
own political agenda.
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