The Sixties
Ah, the Sixties. Bell-bottoms! LSD! The Rolling Stones! Hendrix! Joplin! This counterculture collection shows how the 60s was often at odds with “peace and love” idealism alongside the ideological rivalry that defined world politics. It was a decade defined by the Civil Rights movement, the escalating Vietnam War, the space race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, among other geopolitical tensions.
These films trace the contradictions and turmoil of that era, from Jean Rouch’s seminal docufiction film THE HUMAN PYRAMID (1961), to Robert Kramer’s fascinating time capsule of Venezuela FALN (1965), to Shirley’s Clarke’s enduringly provocative PORTRAIT OF JASON (1967), to the self-reflexive DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (1967), to Madeline Anderson’s essential I AM SOMEBODY (1970), which documents the frontlines of the civil rights movement during the 1969 Charleston hospital workers’ strike. Chris Marker’s films GRIN WITHOUT A CAT and LE JOLI MAI (the latter made with Pierre Lhomme just after the end of the Algerian War), track the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America. More than half a century later, these films speak with new urgency to our own moment of civil unrest and upheaval.
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Integration Report 1
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1960 • 20 minutes
INTEGRATION REPORT 1 examines the struggle for black equality in Alabama, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C., incorporating footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock, protest songs by Maya Angelou, and a speech by M...
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Life of a Queen
Directed by Not credited • Documentary • With Queen Elizabeth II • 1960 • 16 minutes
Compilation newsreel portraying Queen Elizabeth II from her childhood to the early days of her reign, sponsored by the Central Office of Information. This film starts with early footage of the Queen as a girl an...
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Royal Children
Directed by Not credited • Documentary • With Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew • 1961 • 19 minutes
This compilation of newsreels sponsored by the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Central Office of Information, portrays the royal children at a young age. The f...
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The Human Pyramid
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1961 • 93 minutes
At the Lycée Français of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Rouch worked with students there who willingly enacted a story about the arrival of a new white girl, Nadine, and her effect on the interactions of and interracial relationships between the wh...
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A Look at Madness / Captive Feast
Directed by Mario Ruspoli • Documentary • With Dr. François Tosquelles • 1962 • 53 minutes
Ruspoli had a standing interest in isolated and marginal communities, very much on display in films he shot in Lozère, in France’s rugged, unforgiving south. In A LOOK AT MADNESS and CAPTIVE FEAST, it’s pa...
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Lonely Boy
Directed by Wolf Koening, Roman Kroiter • Documentary • 1962 • 26 minutes
The story of popular singer Paul Anka. He rose from obscurity to become the idol of millions of adolescent fans around the world. This film takes a candid look at both sides of the footlights as well as the promotion indus...
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Sierra Leone Greets the Queen
Directed by T. Cummins • Documentary • 1961 • 22 minutes
Record of the royal visit by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to Sierra Leone between 25th November and 1st December 1961. The Royal yacht Britannia arrives in Freetown. Formal greeting from dignitaries including the Prime Minister Sir...
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The Little Cafe
Directed by François Reichenbach • Documentary • 1963 • 12 minutes
A slice-of-life film shot in a provincial cafe and hotel in the city of Bethune in the department of Pas-de-Calais, in Northern France. Older men smoke, drink beer and read the paper, young lovers gaze into each other’s eyes, and...
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The Punishment
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1962 • 64 minutes
An aimless young woman is sent home from school with nothing to do. Drifting through the streets of Paris, she comes across a variety of people.
"Extraordinary and extraordinarily rare movie about public misogyny."—Richard Brody, The New ...
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The Vanishing Street (Robert Vas)
Directed by Robert Vas • Documentary • 1962 • 20 minutes
This classic documentary by Robert Vas depicts the way of life in an east London Jewish community on Hessel Street, Whitechapel. Its back-to-back houses and small shops are about to be replaced by high-rise flats. The thriving community is...
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Tomorrow's Saturday (Michael Grigsby)
Directed by Michael Grigsby • Documentary • 1962 • 18 minutes
Impressions of a typical Saturday at Blackburn, a milling town in the North of England.
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In Memory of Rock
Directed by François Reichenbach • Documentary • With Johnny Hallyday, Les Chaussettes Noires • 1963 • 11 minutes
IN MEMORY OF ROCK captures the power, promise, and fear generated by the early days of rock n’roll. It is also a fascinating study in the juxtaposition of image and music. Outside an...
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FALN
Directed by Peter Gessner & Robert Kramer • Documentary • 1965 • 30 minutes
This 1965 documentary portrait of a civil war is today a remarkable time capsule of Venezuelan political and social history, and valuable background to the ongoing social conflicts in that country.
FALN chronicles key e...
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Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen
Directed by Donald Brittain, Don Owen • Documentary • 1965 • 44 minutes
Produced in 1965, this is an informal portrait of the Montreal poet, novelist and songwriter, Leonard Cohen. He is seen reading his poetry to a rapt audience and also alone, or relaxing with family and friends.
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Paris, a Winter's Day
Directed by Guy Gilles • Documentary • 1962 • 10 minutes
This is a love letter to living in Paris — even on a bitterly cold winter’s day. Interspersed with shots of the city, we hear from Parisians, including a group of boys on the joys of pelting passers-by with snowballs, and a 73-year-old who...
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The Goumbé of the Young Revelers
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1965 • 28 minutes
As West African cities faced explosive growth in the 1960s, young people found themselves displaced, living in urban centers far from their families and home regions.
Enter the goumbés—youth associations combining networking, mutual aid, ...
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The Lion Hunters
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1965 • 77 minutes
Shot on the border between Niger and Mali over a period of seven years, THE LION HUNTERS is Jean Rouch's documentation of the lion hunt performed by the gow hunters of the Songhay people.
Rouch has said that he made the film 'to try to gi...
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Giacometti
Directed by Michael Gill • Documentary • 1967 • 14 minutes
The artist at work in his studio shows artist Giacometti drawing and modelling in his studio in Paris.
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A Tribute to Malcolm X
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1967 • 16 minutes
Made for the William Greaves-produced WNET program Black Journal, A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X includes an interview with Malcolm X’s widow Dr. Betty Shabazz, shortly after his 1965 assassination.
Courtesy of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS, LLC an...
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David Holzman's Diary
Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes
David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Viet...
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Far from Vietnam
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1967 • 115 minutes
Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Clau...
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Jaguar
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1967 • 88 minutes
One of Jean Rouch's classic ethnofictions, JAGUAR follows three young Songhay men from Niger -- Lam Ibrahim, Illo Goudel'ize, and the legendary performer Damoure Zika--on a journey to the Gold Coast (modern day Ghana).
Drawing from his o...
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Little By Little
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1969 • 92 minutes
When we re-join Rouch's collaborators Zika and Ibrahim in Ayorou, Niger, the Little By Little company they had formed at the conclusion of JAGUAR has become a large import-export company. Hearing that a competitor is building a multistory ...
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Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1967 • 108 minutes
On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costum...
