Film Screenings / Programs / Series
1968 ON SCREEN
May 24 – June 4
This extensive film series shines a spotlight on 1968 and the extraordinary political and social events that took place throughout the world in that most tumultuous year. Presented in concert with Metrograph, which will host screenings focusing on the May ’68 protests and their aftermath in France, “1968 On Screen” focuses its attention on events elsewhere. In the U.S. a seemingly society-wide upheaval manifested in various flashpoints such as the student occupation of Columbia University in April, the draft-card-burning by the Catonsville Nine in May, the protests and police riot that upended the Democratic Convention in Chicago in late August, and the ongoing activities of the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and so many other radical groups. In Germany the student movement, or 68er-Bewegung, took shape; in Czechoslovakia the short-lived Prague Spring was brutally crushed by the Soviet invasion in August; and of course in Vietnam, war grinded on in the waning months of Johnson’s administration. Even these dramatic events were only the tip of the iceberg, with unrest, political ferment, and convulsive social transformations taking place throughout the world.
Featuring a selection of films from or concerning the U.S., Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, and Mexico (with works from other parts of the globe to come on our next calendar), this series explores how filmmakers responded to or engaged with events as they unfolded, or reflected on them in retrospect. These films illustrate how intertwined the cinema was and continues to be with the epochal changes that transformed the entire world in and around 1968.
Co-presented by the Goethe-Institut New York; special thanks to Sara Stevenson.
Thanks as well to Bret Berg (American Genre Film Archive); Cassie Blake (Academy Film Archive); Richard Dindo; Jack Durwood (Paramount); Antje Ehmann (Harun Farocki GbR); Anke Hahn & Diana Kluge (Deutsche Kinemathek); Pavla Kallistova (Athanor); Eric Liknaitzky (Contemporary Films); Jonathan Miller, Livia Bloom & Bob Hunter (Icarus Films); Hannah Prouse (BFI); Lynne Sachs; MM Serra (Film-Makers’ Coop); Milos Stehlik (Facets); Tom Sveen (Cinema Guild); JT Takagi & Roselly A. Torres Rojas (Third World Newsreel);
