Cinema '68

Cinema '68 screenings by month: April May June

16 APRIL Wednesday

6.20, Canary Yellow
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1986, 100 mins. Bani-Etemad’s concern with the effects of migration from the countryside to the cities (but particularly Tehran), first realised in a 1985 documentary, here turns to comedy.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.30, Un Homme et une Femme
Claude Lelouch, France, 1966, 102 mins. Lelouch’s Academy Award-winner is almost overpowered by Michel Legrand’s breathily beautiful score.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.45, The Bride Wore Black
François Truffaut, France,1967, 107 mins. Five men make a young bride (Jeanne Moreau) a widow on her wedding day. She contemplates suicide but instead plans to take revenge by methodically killing each of the murderers.
Venue: BFI Southbank

17 APRIL Thursday

8.30, The Blue-Veiled
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1994, 87 mins. Rasul is an elderly, lonely widower. On his tomato farm is a new arrival, Nobar. His initial humanitarian impulses gradually turn into a father-daughter relationship which in turn becomes sexual.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.45, Off-Limits
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1986, 96 mins. Bani-Etemad’s first fiction film is a fine addition to the genre of satiric portraits of bureaucracies and bureaucrats.
Venue: BFI Southbank

18 APRIL Friday

6.10, Les Idoles
Marc’O, France, 1968, 105 mins. This satire of the yé-yé scene mixed reallife French pop stars with actors on the fringe of the situationists and the political events of ’68. The society of the spectacle is deconstructed with mod style and no small amount of flash.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.40, To Whom Will You Show These Films Anyway?
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1993, 90 mins. The last in a documentary trilogy on the Tehran neighbourhood of Fatemiyyeh where could be found, in extremis, the devastating consequences of rapid urbanisation and poverty.
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.00, Import Export
Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 2007, 135 mins. Seidl’s often harrowing drama on the pressures to survive under capitalism
+ panel discussion on New European cinema (the festival strand East Meets East includes new features from across Central Europe). www.eastendfilmfestival.com
Venue: Rich Mix: East End FF

19 APRIL Saturday

1.30, Goodbye Uncle Tom
Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, Italy, 1971, 126 mins. Mondo pseudo documentary imagining slavery in the US and its 20th century legacy. Introduced by Mark Goodall.
Venue: BFI Southbank

3.50, The May Lady
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1998, 88 mins. Bani-Etemad’s most poetic film has Forough, an attractive divorcee and documentary film-maker, working on a film about ideal motherhood.
+ The Last Meeting with Iran, Daftari Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1995, 55 mins.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.40, Foreign Currency
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1989, 90 mins.A satirical look at Iran’s rampant inflation and fixation with foreign currency.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.40, La Piscine
Jacques Deray, France Italy, 1968, 120 mins. Jean Paul (Alain Delon) and Marianne’s (Romy Schneider) Riviera holiday is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Harry (Maurice Ronet)—her ex-lover and his ex-best friend—and his provocative young daughter (Jane Birkin).
Venue: BFI Southbank

20 APRIL Sunday

4.00, The Blue-Veiled
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1994, 87 mins. Rasul is an elderly, lonely widower. On his tomato farm is a new arrival, Nobar. His initial humanitarian impulses gradually turn into a father-daughter relationship which in turn becomes sexual.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.15, Trans-Europ Express
Alain Robbe-Grillet, France Belgium, 1968, 93 mins. The ambiguity of Robbe-Grillet’s surreal but playful story anticipates the evershifting grey areas of ’68.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.45, Weekend
Jean Luc Godard, France, 1967, 105mins. Famed for its virtuoso cinematography—including a stunning ten minute tracking shot—Godard’s dystopian road movie is a ferocious attack on consumerism.
Venue: BFI Southbank

21 APRIL Monday

6.10, Under the Skin of the City
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2000, 92 mins. Set during the 1998 elections, and weaving complex contemporary issues into a family drama, the film was a huge success in Tehran.
+ Centralisation, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1987, 35 mins.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.20, La Collectionneuse
Eric Rohmer, France, 1966, 90 mins.One lesson of the fourth ‘moral tale’, Rohmer’s most erotically charged, is that the problems of individuals are as important as those of the state, a line that led the Cahiers group to reject him as a reactionary.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.45, Our Times
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2002, 75 mins.This two-part documentary firstly follows teenagers who established campaign headquarters for a liberal mullah. In the second, she films some of the 48 women who stood in the Presidential election.
Venue: BFI Southbank

23 APRIL Wednesday

6.20, Gilaneh
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2005, 84 mins. Bani-Etemad is the first woman director to confront the Iran-Iraq war, and mothers and children inform her approach.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.50, Mainline
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2006, 78 mins.The playing of Bani-Etemad’s daughter, Baran Kosari, as an addict is phenomenal.
+ Under the City’s Skin, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1996, 35 mins.
Venue: BFI Southbank

24 APRIL Monday

6.00, Weekend
Jean Luc Godard, France, 1967, 105mins. Famed for its virtuoso cinematography—including a stunning ten minute tracking shot—Godard’s dystopian road movie is a ferocious attack on consumerism.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.15, The May Lady
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1998, 88 mins. Bani-Etemad’s most poetic film has Forough, an attractive divorcee and documentary film-maker, working on a film about ideal motherhood.
+ The Last Meeting with Iran, Daftari Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1995, 55 mins.
Venue: BFI Southbank

25 APRIL Friday

6.30, Trans-Europ Express
Alain Robbe-Grillet, France Belgium, 1968, 93 mins. The ambiguity of Robbe-Grillet’s surreal but playful story anticipates the evershifting grey areas of ’68.
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.00, Censorship as a Creative Force?
ScreenTalk with three Oscar-winning directors: Andrzej Wajda, Istvan Szabo, Jiri Menzel and Peter Hames + Escape from the ’Liberty’ Cinema, Wojciech Marczewski, Poland 1991, 92 mins. This fantasy comedy by Polish master Marczewski is set just before the collapse of Poland’s communist regime and stars Janusz Gajosa as a tired and lonely provincial censor.
Venue: Barbican

7.00, Conversation with Pedro Costa + 8.30, Colossal Youth
Pedro Costa, Portugal/France, 2008 (New Release), 155 mins. Costa has created a unique filmic hybrid of documentary observation and fictional re-enactment. A rare opportunity to experience the austere power of the medium’s politicized successor to Robert Bresson and Jean-Marie Straub. (Also Sat 26: 5.45 & 8.30 / Sun 27: 4.00 & 7.00 / Tue 29: 7.30 / Wed 30: 7.30).
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.40, Canary Yellow
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1986, 100 mins. Bani-Etemad’s concern with the effects of migration from the countryside to the cities (but particularly Tehran), first realised in a 1985 documentary, here turns to comedy.
Venue: BFI Southbank

26 APRIL Saturday

11am to 6.00 (donation), In the Spirit of Marc Karlin: Creative Documentary in Action
Presented by Holly Aylett and Vertigo Magazine Rarely seen documentaries from the ’70s UK film collectives, including two film essays by ’Vertigo’ founder and lifelong image activist Marc Karlin, ’Utopias’, on Left visions and ’The Serpent’, an intense attack on Rupert Murdoch. + panel discussions.
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema

3.00, Man of Marble
Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1977, 165 mins. In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero.
Venue: Barbican

3.50, Our Times
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2002, 75 mins.This two-part documentary firstly follows teenagers who established campaign headquarters for a liberal mullah. In the second, she films some of the 48 women who stood in the Presidential election.
Venue: BFI Southbank

4.00, Slogan
Pierre Grimblat, France, 1969, 90 mins.When Serge (Serge Gainsbourg), an award-winning advertising executive, meets the pretty, equally shallow Evelyne (Jane Birkin), he rents her an apartment and decides to leave his pregnant wife.
+ La Révolution n’est qu’un début. Continuons le combat, Pierre Clémenti, France, 1968, 30 mins. Clémenti’s silent, psychedelic and stylised manifesto for ’permanent revolution’.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.30, Un Homme et une Femme
Claude Lelouch, France, 1966, 102 mins. Lelouch’s Academy Award-winner is almost overpowered by Michel Legrand’s breathily beautiful score.
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.30, Flashing on the Sixties: A Tribal Document
Lisa Law, USA, 1990, 52 mins. Featuring Timothy Leary, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Allen Ginsberg, Taj Mahal and Michelle Phillips among others, this is a look at the 60’s from the inside, all set to a soundtrack that evokes the spirit of the time with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin and more.
+ Hi Mom!, Brian De Palma, USA, 1970, 87 mins. De Niro plays variations on a Vietnam vet returning to NY as, variously, a ’peep art’ porno movie-maker, an urban guerilla and an insurance salesman. Shot by De Palma in visceral vérité, it actually is terrifying. Anarchic and very appealing
Venue: Horse Hospital

8.30, Under the Skin of the City
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2000, 92 mins. Set during the 1998 elections, and weaving complex contemporary issues into a family drama, the film was a huge success in Tehran.
+ Centralisation, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1987, 35 mins.
Venue: BFI Southbank

8.45, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
William Klein, France, 1966, 102 mins. Klein’s op-art masterpiece, using a television crew to follow his model’s every move, is a satire of the fashion industry. Very funny, and so sharp you have to see it more than once to catch all the barbs.
Venue: BFI Southbank

27 APRIL Sunday

4.15, Les Idoles
Marc’O, France, 1968, 105 mins. This satire of the yé-yé scene mixed reallife French pop stars with actors on the fringe of the situationists and the political events of ’68. The society of the spectacle is deconstructed with mod style and no small amount of flash.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.20, To Whom Will You Show These Films Anyway?
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 1993, 90 mins. The last in a documentary trilogy on the Tehran neighbourhood of Fatemiyyeh where could be found, in extremis, the devastating consequences of rapid urbanisation and poverty.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.30, The Bride Wore Black
François Truffaut, France,1967, 107 mins. Five men make a young bride (Jeanne Moreau) a widow on her wedding day. She contemplates suicide but instead plans to take revenge by methodically killing each of the murderers.
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.00, Jiri Menzel ScreenTalk + I Served the King of England
Jiri Menzel, Czech Republic/Slovakia, 2006,118 mins. Menzel’s fourth adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal’s work tells the story of an ambitious hotel maitre d’ before and during the Second World War.
Venue: Barbican

8.45, Alphaville
Jean- Luc Godard, France, 1965, 98 mins. Godard’s homage to pop art and pulp fiction makes for one of cinema’s great urban dystopias.
Venue: BFI Southbank

28 APRIL Monday

6.30, Mr Freedom
William Klein, France, 1968, 100 mins. A political farce in which American superhero Freedom (John Abbey) hears that France is in danger of falling to Communism. Released in the wake of the Paris riots, it was banned by the De Gaulle Government.
Venue: BFI Southbank

6.45, Taking Sides
Istvan Szabo, France/UK/Ger/Austria, 2001, 108 mins. Based on the life of Wilhelm FÌÅrtwangler, one of the most controversial German conductors of the 1930s. With Stellan Skarsgard and Harvey Keitel.
Venue: Barbican

8.45, Masculin Féminin
Jean-Luc Godard, France Sweden, 1966, 110 mins. Young idealist Paul (Jean Pierre Léaud) is a leftie who ends up dating aspiring yé-yé singer Madeleine (Chantal Goya). As Godard says, “This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola.”
Venue: BFI Southbank

9.00, The Round-Up
Miklos Jancso, Hungary, 1966, 90 mins. Set in the brutal aftermath of the 1848-9 Revolution, the film focuses on a group of outlaws continuing something akin to guerrilla warfare. A masterpiece.
(see www.secondrundvd.com)
Venue: Barbican

29 APRIL Tuesday

6.30, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?
William Klein, France, 1966, 102 mins. Klein’s op-art masterpiece, using a television crew to follow his model’s every move, is a satire of the fashion industry. Very funny, and so sharp you have to see it more than once to catch all the barbs.
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.30 (Free), Hothouse at the Roxy: Indymedia: Image Activists for the World
From its 1999 origins reporting protest in Seattle, today over 150 Independent Media Centres operate around the world. London Indymedia Kollective presents a multi-media evening revealing how it has successfully stood against corporate capitalist media and provided some of the best coverage of events that the mainstream ignores or misrepresents. www.indymedia.org.uk
Venue: Roxy Bar and Screen

8.45, Mr Freedom
William Klein, France, 1968, 100 mins. A political farce in which American superhero Freedom (John Abbey) hears that France is in danger of falling to Communism. Released in the wake of the Paris riots, it was banned by the De Gaulle Government.
Venue: BFI Southbank

30 APRIL Wednesday

6.10, La Piscine
Jacques Deray, France Italy, 1968, 120 mins. Jean Paul (Alain Delon) and Marianne’s (Romy Schneider) Riviera holiday is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of Harry (Maurice Ronet)—her ex-lover and his ex-best friend—and his provocative young daughter (Jane Birkin).
Venue: BFI Southbank

7.00, Larks on the String
Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia, 1969, 90 mins. Based on Hrabal’s short stories, the gentle satire depicts the everyday life of the former bourgeoisie forced to work in a scrap yard as part of their ’re-education’.
Venue: Barbican

8.40, Slogan
Pierre Grimblat, France, 1969, 90 mins.When Serge (Serge Gainsbourg), an award-winning advertising executive, meets the pretty, equally shallow Evelyne (Jane Birkin), he rents her an apartment and decides to leave his pregnant wife.
+ La Révolution n’est qu’un début. Continuons le combat, Pierre Clémenti, France, 1968, 30 mins. Clémenti’s silent, psychedelic and stylised manifesto for ’permanent revolution’.
Venue: BFI Southbank

9.00, Gilaneh
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Iran, 2005, 84 mins. Bani-Etemad is the first woman director to confront the Iran-Iraq war, and mothers and children inform her approach.
Venue: BFI Southbank

9.00, Funeral Rites
Zdenek Sirovy, Czechoslovakia, 1969, 70 mins. A feature debut of considerable style, the story hinges on negotiations for a burial plot but soon moves on to cover-ups involving a road accident and a trail of corruption leading back to the period of collectivisation.
Venue: Barbican

2 MAY Friday

Back to Top

For one week from today at 13.45. If…
Lindsay Anderson, UK, 1968, 111 mins.The classic fable of public school revolution.
Venue: Ritzy Picturehouse

6.15, Before the Revolution
Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1964, 115 mins. Made when Bertolucci was only 22, this is the first of the director's many films to deal with the conflict between freedom and conformity. Bernardo Bertolucci present (tbc).
Venue: Ciné Lumière

7.00, Paradise Now: Essential French Avant Garde Cinema, 1890-2008: May 68
91 mins. Remarkable experimental work out of the Paris uprising by Marker, Godard, Fromanger, Pommereulle and the Medvedkin Group.
Venue: Tate Modern

8.45, Partner
Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1968, 105 mins. Bertolucci’s fascinating response to the events of May ’68, as he takes freewheeling critical potshots at all forms of political ideology. Bernardo Bertolucci present (tbc).
Venue: Ciné Lumière

3 MAY Saturday

11am to 6.00 (donation), : Decolonization of the mind.
Presented by James Neil and Parallax Media A series of events took place in Africa in the late ’50s and early ’60s that helped shape European and American radicalisation.
11.00am Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask. Dir: Isaac Julien, GB/France, 1996, 70min
A formally audacious and poetic film of the life and thinking of one of the most influential
anti-colonial figures of the 20th century.
1.30pm The Battle of Algiers. Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo, Prod: Yacef Saadi, Algeria/Italy, 1965,
135min
An episodic gripping documentary-like dramatisation of the first phase of the Algerian
liberation struggle. A tour-de-force, which continues to have profound contemporary
relevance.
3.45pm Harvest 3000 Years. Dir: Haile Gerima. Ethiopia, 1975, 150 min
A satirical drama on the post-colonial experience in Africa, Harvest follows a wandering
musician who speaks out against an outdated feudal system. A stirring masterpiece of
African cinema.
Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1
tube: Russell Square, free (£5 recommended donation on the door)
Presented by James Neil, Parallax Media, with curator Karen Alexander and Q&As with
speakers .
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema

3.00, LIP (The LIP Factor, Imagination in Power)
Christian Rouaud, France, 2007, 118 mins. This documentary looks at the strike at the LIP works in Besan̤on, the most emblematic workers’ strike of the post-’68 period.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.00, Half a Life
Romain Goupil, France, 1982, 97 mins. A documentary profile of Michel Recanati, a revolutionary whose life veered from the hopes of political organisation in 1968 to despair in the following period.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.00, Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary
Yolande du Luart, USA, 1971, 62 mins. A loving tribute to the courage and dedication of Angela Davis.
Venue: Curzon Soho

8.30, Milou en Mai
Louis Malle, France, 1990, 107 mins. A bitter-sweet comedy of manners about provincial bourgeois life in May ’68.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

4 MAY Sunday

12pm, Soy Cuba
Mikhail Kalatozov, Cuba, 1964, 135 mins. A four-chaptered epic of injustices exposed in Batista’s dictatorial Cuba, elevated by suitably revolutionary camerawork, its confidence a formal expression of faith in the island’s uprising. + discussion with the Respect Coalition and Professor Mike Gonzalez, author of ’Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution’.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

2.00, La Chinoise
Jean Luc Godard, France, 1967, 96 mins. Godard’s brilliant dialectical farce, in which members of a Maoist cell discuss the implications of the Chinese cultural revolution.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

4.00, Funeral Parade of Roses
Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, 1969, 107 mins. Perhaps the most radical—and remarkable—response to the 1968 unrest in Tokyo, a hyperconscious, hugely inventive and queer reworking of the Oedipus myth set among Black GIs and Japanese hippies. Introduced by Alex Jacoby, Japanese cinema specialist.
Venue: Curzon Soho

4.30, Weekend
Jean Luc Godard, France, 1967, 105mins. Famed for its virtuoso cinematography—including a stunning ten minute tracking shot—Godard’s dystopian road movie is a ferocious attack on consumerism.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.00, Generation 68 ***UK Premiere***
Simon Brook France, 2008, 53 mins. New ARTE doc on the culture of 1968, with contributions from Milos Forman, Annie Nightingale, Vaclav Havel, Ed Ruscha, William Klein, Dennis Hopper, Peter Brook and Mary Quant..
Venue: Curzon Soho

7.00, Le Révélateur
Philippe Garrel, France, 1968, 62 mins. One of the experimental works made under the rubric of Zanzibar films, Garrel’s silent film is a fractured and elliptical, but instinctive, elemental, and haunting rumination.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6 MAY Tuesday

6.00, The Demonstration World in Action
Granada TV UK, tx. 18.3.68, 25 mins. 24 hours after, a full report on the antiwar protests outside London’s US Embassy. Introduced by its editor Dai Vaughan. + further work to be announced...
Venue: Curzon Soho

6.45, Prague 1968: Czechoslovak Newsreels from1968
69, 33 mins. + Confusion, Evald Schorm, Czechoslovakia, 1968-69, 1989, 35 mins. Newsreels reveal tanks rolling into Prague, and astonishment and anger changing into the nation’s passive resistance. Evald Schorm’s silent, lyrical documentary features the death of young student Jan Palach in January 1969. Introduced by H.E. Jan Winkler, Czech Ambassador to the UK.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.30, Invasion
Leslie Woodhead, Granada UK, 1980, 111 mins. A powerful docudrama of events inside the Czech Presidium from the first day of the Soviet Invasion. We follow the key protagonists in an atmosphere of moral dilemma and potential betrayal. Introduced by Leslie Woodhead.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.45, History Is Now Season
Curated by Bob Stanley The Angry Brigade, Gordon Carr, BBC UK, 1973, 50 mins. The earliest documentary on Britain’s anarchist guerilla group, made a year after the trial of the ’Stoke Newington 8’. The jury found four of them guilty but recommended clemency.
+ The Youth Uprising, Maurice Lemaitre, France, 1969, 28 mins. Footage of the uprising that sparked off international unrest. Lemaitre was a prot̩g̩ of Lettrism founder Isadore Isou.
+ Panel discussion chaired by Peter Doggett, author of There’s A Riot Going On.
Venue: Barbican

7 MAY Wednesday

6.00, Newsreel programme I
The Newsreel programmes I-III present a rare selection of short US documentaries, featuring the Black Panthers, braburning feminists, the Columbia University riots and much more. Thanks to Barbara Stone.
Venue: Curzon Soho

6.00, Seven Days Somewhere Else
Marin Karmitz, France, 1968, 100 mins. Karmitz’ debut feature centres on a young musician who has a brief affair with a ballerina, but returns home to his waiting wife, child, television, profession... and a gun. Introduced By MK.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.30, Unreconciled: Italian Political Cinema
A talk with Maurizio Fantoni Minnella. + Fists in the Pocket, Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 1965, 113 mins. This daring debut seems to anticipate the years of student protest, while narrating a family tragedy bordering on horror.
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute

7.30 (Free), 1968 Film Group
Selected Works: 65 mins. Five short films from this Situationist film collective, offering a unique blend of the political and the surreal, creating a coruscating critique of imagined realties.
Venue: Roxy Bar and Screen

8.30, Blow for Blow
Marin Karmitz, France, 1972, 89 mins. Known today as France’s most visible producer, distributor and exhibitor of art-house cinema, Marin Karmitz is less recognised as a key exponent of post-May ’68 cinema. Preceded by a conversation between Karmitz and critic Chris Darke.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8 MAY Thursday

6.00, Vertigo Magazine: Picture This: Time Unfolding dvd launch
artists’ film and video works by Dryden Goodwin, Michael Curran and Emily Wardill, curated by Lucy Reynolds from the Picture This archive to launch their anthology dvd and Vertigo latest issue, also the 1968 Season Brochure www.vertigomagazine.co.uk; www.picture-this.org.uk.
Venue: Curzon Soho

6.30, The Working Class Goes to Heaven
Elio Petri, Italy, 1971, 117 mins. Gianmaria Volonte plays Lulu Massa, a pieceworker. After an accident at work he discovers the solidarity of his workmates during a strike and turns revolutionary. + intro by Maurizio Fantoni Minnella.
Venue: Italian Cultural Institute

6.30, Poland in 1968: March Almonds
Radoslaw Piwowarski, Poland, 1990, 89 mins.In a small provincial town the Communist government launches a smear campaign against the Jewish minority.
+ 8.30, Gdanski Railway Station, Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, Poland, 2006, 52 mins.
After the mass exile of citizens of Jewish origin from Poland in 1968, emigrants have been meeting for 20 years in an Israeli spa, Aszkelon, located on the Mediterranean.
+ Kredens, Jacob Dammas, Poland, 2007, 28 mins.
+ panel discussion with Neal Ascherson (The Observer) Krzysztof Pszenicki (ex BBC Polish section director) and Jacob Dammas (filmmaker).
Venue: Ciné Lumière

9 MAY Friday

For one week from today at 12.30pm. The Round Up
Miklos Jancso, Hungary, 1966, 90 mins. Set in the brutal aftermath of the 1848-9 Revolution, the film focuses on a group of outlaws continuing something akin to guerrilla warfare. A masterpiece.
(see www.secondrundvd.com)
Venue: Ritzy Picturehouse

6.30, Two documentaries
provided by the INA (newsreels, archive images, etc)
+ 7.45, Talk with Patrick Rotman
+ 8.45, 68
Patric Rotman, France, 2008, 94 mins.
A dive into the chaos of a turbulent year, featuring fantastic footage and the music of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

7.00, Pound
Robert Downey Sr., USA, 1970, 92 mins.An existential look into the world of dogs locked up in a NYC pound - except all the dogs are played by humans. One dopeaddled movie. Not screened for over 30 years, essential cult viewing.
+ Fritz The Cat , Ralph Bakshi, USA, 1972, 78 mins. Based on Robert Crumb’s underground character, Fritz The Cat. Morality here takes a backseat to drugs, sex and an incredibly soulful soundtrack.
Venue: Barbican

10 MAY Saturday

3.15, The Salamander
Alain Tanner, Switz, 1971, 124 mins.Intro by AT. One of three films Tanner made with writer John Berger. A journalist recruits a novelist friend to help him write a TV script based on a news item. The truth of the incident eludes them both. Introduced by Alain Tanner.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.15, Charles, Dead or Alive
Alain Tanner, Switz, 1969, 93 mins.Intro by AT. Tanner’s satirical social comedy examines a well-to-do businessman who shacks up with a bohemian couple and their daughter. Introduced by Alain Tanner
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.30, Jonah, Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
Alain Tanner, Switz, 1976, 116 mins.Intro by AT. A warm and brilliant polemical comedy looking at eight people drawn together in Geneva in the aftermath of 1968 in an attempt to find an alternative way of life, beyond the grip of capitalism. Introduced by Alain Tanner
Venue: Ciné Lumière

11 MAY Sunday

11am, Hour of the Furnaces
Fernando E. Solanas, Argentina, 1968, 260 mins.After it was banned throughout Latin America on its release, simply watching the film became a political act. The definitive documentary on national liberation is punctuated with pauses for political discussion.
+ talk with Colombian artist Juan Pablo Echeverri (in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery, London. ‘Once More, With Feeling: an Exhibition of Contemporary Colombian Photography’, will been shown at The Photographers’ Gallery, 5 Great Newport St, WC2, Tube: Leicester Square, www.photonet.org, from 17 April-15 June 2008).
Venue: Renoir Cinema

12pm, USA ’68: Hot Damn, Vietnam! (and Other Disasters) season
Curated by Michael Chaiken The Bed
James Broughton, USA, 1968, 19 mins.
A perfect visual representation of the polymorphously-perverse eroticism of the American counterculture and its Zen-like acceptance of all sexes and possibilities as one. – Amos Vogel
+ Vixen! , Russ Meyer, USA, 1968, 78 mins. Meyer’s first monster sex-hit, in which randy lumberjacks, Canadian Mounties and Cuban revolutionaries are all skewered by vixen Erica Gavin.
Venue: Curzon Soho

2pm, T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
Paul Sharits, USA, 1968, 14 mins. Sharits’ ode to the Black Revolution is a violent assault on the senses.
+ Bullitt, Peter Yates, USA, 1968, 113 mins. Bullitt helped to redefine American cinema for years with its brutal nihilism, hip soundtrack and high style.
Venue: Curzon Soho

12pm, Tell Me Lies
Peter Brook, UK, 1968, 118 mins. Remarkable filmic incarnation of Brook’s own pioneering stage investigation of the Vietnam war. + discussion with Michael Kustow, Glenda Jackson (tbc) and Peter Brook (tbc). + Bertrand Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, Peter Davis, UK, 1968, 10 mins.
Venue: Curzon Mayfair

2.00, Milou en Mai
Louis Malle, France, 1990, 107 mins. A bitter-sweet comedy of manners about provincial bourgeois life in May ‘68.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

4.30, Regular Lovers
Philippe Garrel, France, 2006, 178 mins.Garrel regards May ’68 objectively as a failure but his own loosely autobiographical film on that moment is a testament to its enduring aesthetic of poetic resistance.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

12 MAY Monday

8.45, The Hornsey Film
Patricia Holland, UK, 1970, 60 mins.On 28th May 1968, the students at Hornsey College of Art took control of the building in an inspiring but short-lived experiment. With the aid of some of the staff they attempted a revolution. + Panel discussion with Patricia Holland and former Hornsey students.
Venue: Barbican

13 MAY Tuesday

6.00, Newsreel programme II
The Newsreel programmes I-III present a rare selection of short US documentaries, featuring the Black Panthers, braburning feminists, the Columbia University riots and much more. Thanks to Barbara Stone.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

6.15, UUU, Usines Universités Union
Various directors, France, 1976, 77 mins.A collective film made by students during the riots, showing solidarity with the workers.
+ The Uprising of Youth, Maurice Lemaître, France, 1969, 28 mins. Lettrism Isidore Isou’s protégé made films joyously connecting with May ‘68. In French only.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

7.30, Reprise
Hervé Le Roux, France, 1996, 98 mins.After le Roux saw a photograph of a striking worker in Cahiers du Cinéma he began a long search for this ‘heroine’, while charting the changes in French radical politics over the past 30 years.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.45, The Weather Underground
Sam Green, Bill Siegel, USA, 2002, 92 mins.Using the slogan ‘Bring the war home’, The Weathermen’s primary aim was the violent overthrow of the American government.
Venue: Barbican

14 MAY Wednesday

6.00, Newsreel programme III
The Newsreel programmes I-III present a rare selection of short US documentaries, featuring the Black Panthers, braburning feminists, the Columbia University riots and much more. Thanks to Barbara Stone.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

6.30, Le Fond de l'Air est Rouge
Chris Marker, France, 1977, 240 mins. Intro by Chris Darke. Marker’s epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the ’60s and ’70s: Vietnam, Bolivia, May ‘68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left. Interval at 9pm.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

6.30pm, Un Tigre de Papel (Paper Tiger)+Q&A Luis Ospina
Luis Ospina, Colombia 2007. Taking the pioneering Colombian collage artist Pedro Manrique Figueroa’s, life and work as a pretext, //Un Tigre de Papel// takes the viewer on a journey through Colombian history through the 1960s and up until 1981, when the artist mysteriously disappeared from view. A Paper Tiger is itself a collage, where art and politics rub shoulders, where truth and lies are placed side by side, where documentary and fiction intermingle. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the Director, Luis Ospina. In Collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery
Venue: Curzon Soho

7.00, Break the Power of the Manipulators
Helke Sander, Germany, 1967 / 68, 48 mins.(possibly 15 May: tel Goethe for details). An essayistic documentary about the political influence of the right-wing Springer Press Concern and the student campaign against it.
+ Subjectitude The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Helke Sander and Rachel Millward, Director of the Bird’s Eye View Film Festival, and the film historian Julia Knight, Sunderland University.
Venue: Goethe Institute

15 MAY Thursday

6.30, Rocky Road to Dublin
Peter Lennon, Ireland, 1968, 99 mins.Documentary lamenting the hypocrisy of a country dominated by its Catholic clergy. Photographed by the celebrated Raoul Coutard, it was the last film to be shown at Cannes in 1968. Includes the screening of its ‘Making of’.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

8.45, Far From Vietnam
Chris Marker, William Klein, Jean Luc Godard,etc., France, 1967, 115 mins.Loin de Vietnam is a searing indictment of US involvement in Vietnam.
Venue: Ciné Lumière

16 MAY Friday

For one week from today at 12.30pm. Alphaville
Jean- Luc Godard, France, 1965, 98 mins. Godard’s homage to pop art and pulp fiction makes for one of cinema’s great urban dystopias.
Venue: Ritzy Picturehouse

From today (16-22, 24-26 May), RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy
Shane O’Sullivan, UK 2007, 102 mins A staggering amount of evidence is piled against the ‘lone assassin’ theory, but Sirhan Sirhan remains in prison for the murder of Robert Kennedy.
Venue: ICA

From today, Terror's Advocate
Barbet Schroeder, France, 2007, 135 mins.Freedom fighter or terrorist? A captivating film showing the complex historical relationship between politics, underground resistance, the legal system and moral ambiguity. Schroeder investigates the enigmatic lawyer Jacques Vergès, exposing longhidden links between major political events of the last 50 years.
Venue: Curzon Soho and Renoir Cinema

6.30, Tariq Ali presents: Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition
Maurice Hatton, UK, 1970, 90 mins.Ali presents Maurice Hatton’s extraordinary and hilarious first film, starring a young John Thaw as a working class advocate of world revolution who seduces a string of bourgeois beauties in the hope of impregnating them with his revolutionary message. Tariq Ali has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics, six novels and scripts for both stage and screen. (thanks to Verso).
Venue: Curzon Mayfair

6.10, Heartbeat Detector
Nicolas Klotz, France, 2007, 135 mins.A major new feature examining the buried histories of Corporate and Nazi psychology, with Mathieu Amalric astonishing.
+ Q&A with Klotz and writer Elizabeth Perceval and a panel discussion with critic Chris Darke and activist writer Dan Gretton (www.platformlondon. org). On general release at Curzon Soho from today.
Venue: Curzon Soho

6.30, In the Midst of the Malestream –- Disputes on Strategy in the New Women's Movement
Helke Sander, Germany, 2005, 92 mins. A film-essay revisiting central issues of the women's movement in the context of current discussions about the politics of motherhood. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Helke Sander, leading UK feminist Sheila Rowbotham and art historian Rosa Nogués.
Venue: Goethe Institute

7.30, Manson
Robert Hendrickson & Laurence Merrick, USA, 1972, 83 mins.Oscar nominated documentary on Charles Manson and his “'family'. Use of split-screen imagery and colourful opticals give the doc a psychedelic feel, enhanced by a memorable song soundtrack from former Manson family members.
+ The Hippie Revolt, Edgar Beatty, USA, 1967, 75 mins. A psychedelic celebration of the nitty gritty non-reality of the Haight-Ashbury hippie experience! Full of free love, be-ins, love-ins, happenings etc.
Venue: Horse Hospital

17 MAY Saturday

12pm, RFK
John Frankenheimer, USA, 1968, 25 mins.Robert Kennedy's official campaign film was shot along the whistle stop train tour that ended fatefully in California in June 1968.
+ Wild in the Streets, Barry Shear, USA, 1968, 94 mins. A messiah-like pop star President puts everyone over 30 in psychedelic rehabilitation camps. Released during the 1968 primary season, this insolent satire allegorizes everything. Introduced by Michael Chaiken.
Venue: Curzon Mayfair

18 MAY Sunday

12pm, Chiefs
Richard Leacock and Noel Parmentel, Jr., USA, 1968, 18 mins.At a police convention in Hawaii, where officers discuss protests, Black Panthers, and the most effective methods of stopping them.
+ 1PM, D.A. Pennebaker, USA, 1968/71, 95 mins. Direct cinema and political theatre meet in a series of loosely related tableaux, featuring Rip Torn, Amiri Baraka, Tom Hayden, Eldridge Cleaver and the Jefferson Airplane. Introduced by Michael Chaiken.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

2.30, No President
Jack Smith, USA, 1968, 45 mins. A crazed account of former Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie being abducted by pirates and auctioned off in a Baghdad slave market.
+ The Edge, Robert Kramer, USA, 1968, 102 mins. The plight of a troubled anti-war activist who plans to assassinate the US President. His resolve forces others to re-examine their commitment to radical action.
Venue: Curzon Soho

4.30, OH
Stan Vanderbeek, USA, 1968, 10 mins.A haunting view of man drawn in brilliant animation graphics. The title alludes to Robert Kennedy’s dying words ‘oh. . .oh. . . oh. . . ‘
+ Maidstone, Norman Mailer, USA, 1968/71, 96 mins. An improvised and intense psychodrama, Maidstone celebrates a highly popular though esoteric film director Norman T. Kingsley, who is casting a remake of Bunuel’s Belle de Jour. Also considering a run for the US presidency, Kingsley finds himself being scrutinized by both the Eastern establishment and an elite secret police organization ostensibly formed to protect him from assassination. Introduced by Michael Chaiken.
Venue: Curzon Soho

19 MAY Monday

Cancelled event: Please note that the Slavoj Zizek event originally advertised is now cancelled due to illness

20 MAY Tuesday

8.45, Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army
Robert Stone, USA, 2004, 89 mins.The SLA caused panic when they kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in 1974 and she switched allegiance to her captors. Includes the first-ever interviews with two surviving members of the SLA.
Venue: Barbican

22 MAY Thursday

7.00, From the Reports of Security Guards & Patrol Services No. 1, 5, & 8
Helke Sander, Germany 1984, 11mins / 1986, 10mins / 1985, 6mins. Based on true events, each of the three shorts distils a fundamental social issue into one startling incident. +A Bonus for Irene Helke Sander, Germany, 1971, 50 mins. + 3 shorts. A comic-strip like portrayal of a rebellious factory worker and single-mother of two.
Venue: Goethe Institute

23 MAY Friday

For one week from today at 12.30pm. The Party and the Guests (U)
Jan Nemec. Starring: Ivan Vyskocil. Czechoslovakia 1966. 71 mins. This experimental Czechoslovakian film seems disturbingly akin to the works of Spain’s Luis Buñuel. A group of happy picnickers run afoul of Jan Klusak, a bullying sadist who has some sort of unbreakable hold over his followers. Klusak subjects the picnickers to a cruel psychological game, wherein he plays interrogator. The ordeal comes to a brief end when a stranger (Vyskocil) arrives, apologises for Klusak, and invites everyone to an elegant, formal outdoor banquet. But the bizarre ‘fun and games’ continue, ending with the group embarking on a fully armed hunting party in search of a missing guest. Built on the premise of unquestioning conformity, the film is an iconoclastic Czech New Wave classic that reflected the revolutionary late-1960s and also exposes contemporary social themes.
Venue: Ritzy Picturehouse

24 MAY Saturday

11am to 6.00, American Dissent, from Columbia to Chicago
Helke Sander, Germany, 1971, 50 mins. + 3 shorts.(donation) Presented by Paul Cronin. Haskell Wexler’s iconic 1969 feature ‘Medium Cool’ + Paul Cronin’s documentary ‘Look Out Haskell, It’s Real! The Making of Medium Cool’
+ work-in-progress screening of Paul Cronin’s ‘A Time to Stir’, a study of the student protests at Columbia University in April 1968. Includes new interviews with key players and never-before-seen archive footage and photographs.
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema

25 MAY Sunday

12pm, If...
Lindsay Anderson, UK, 1968, 111 mins.The classic fable of public school revolution.
+ Reading: short story from ’68 (see Publications) by Marc Werner, responding to ‘If…’ and read by the collection’s editor Nicholas Royle.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

2pm, The Fall
Peter Whitehead, UK/USA, 1968, 120 mins.A dazzling montage of madness and mayhem, resistance and radical image enquiry from the epicentres of the American crisis; a film way ahead of its time.
+ Peter Whitehead in conversation with film-maker Paul Cronin.
Venue: Curzon Soho

27 MAY Tuesday

8.45, Germany In Autumn
Rainer Werner Fassbinder et al., Germany, 1978, 123 mins.Collectively made by twelve German filmmakers a year after the most bloody period in post-war German history, thanks to the activities of the Baader- Meinhof Group.
Venue: Barbican

28 MAY Wednesday

7.30, The Whole World Is Watching: Weatherman ‘69
Raymond Pettibon, USA, 1989, 122 mins.Originally realised as a home video shot by Raymond Pettibon and enacted by a host of friends and musicians around Sonic Youth. Creating a cast of more than 20 half fictitious, half historic characters the text draws a collage-like image of the resistance group living in the underground.
Venue: Horse Hospital

29 MAY Thursday

7.00, The All Around Reduced Personality – Redupers
Helke Sander, Germany, 1977, 95 mins. + ‘Silvio’.The director plays a photographer who feels rather “reduced” by being a mother, lover, breadwinner and artist all at the same time.
Venue: Goethe Institute

6.20, Chicago 10 ***UK Premiere***
Brett Morgan, USA, 2007, 103 mins. This singular documentary fiction animation follows the courtroom circus that followed the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where hippies, yippies, young and old, female and male, doctors and street cleaners were brutally beaten by a police force under the fierce control of right wing conservative Mayor Daley. We hope to welcome director Brett Morgan (The Kid Stays in the Picture) for a Q&A after the screening.
Venue: Curzon Soho

30 MAY Friday

For one week from today at 12.30pm. Chiefs
Richard Leacock and Noel Parmentel, Jr., USA, 1968, 18 mins. At a police convention in Hawaii, where officers discuss protests, Black Panthers, and the most effective methods of stopping them. +1am/1pmD.A. Pennebaker, USA, 1968/71, 95 mins Direct cinema and political theatre meet in a series of loosely related tableaux, featuring Rip Torn, Amiri Baraka, Tom Hayden, Eldridge Cleaver and the Jefferson Airplane.
Venue: Ritzy Picturehouse

1 JUNE Sunday

Back to Top

1pm, Sympathy for the Devil
Jean-Luc Godard, UK, 1968, 104 mins.The notorious ‘Producer’s Cut’ of Godard’s investigation of the Rolling Stones. + 30 minute documentary (1968) on the making of the film by Mike Dibb, who will introduce it.
+ Panel discussion on 1968 and cinema with writers Sylvia Harvey and Chris Darke.
Venue: Curzon Soho

4 JUNE Wednesday

7.00, The Subjective Factor
Helke Sander, Germany 1980 / 81, 138 mins.A fiction reconstructing the beginnings of the women’s movement in the context of the male-dominated student revolt.
Venue: Goethe Institute

5 JUNE Thursday

4.30, Into View -A Two Programme Dialogue
23 Short Films Selected by Ute Aurand (Berlin) and Peter Todd (London), also introducing. Rarely seen films by Stan Brakhage, Marie Menken Storm De Hirsch, Robert Beavers, Bruce Conner and others.
Venue: Goethe Institute

8 JUNE Sunday

12pm, Theorem
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1968, 94 mins.The radical Italian director’s unique assault on bourgeois values through his mysterious protagonist’s seduction of every member of an industrialist’s family. Terence Stamp has never been better.
Venue: Renoir Cinema

12pm, Lions Love
Agnes Varda, USA, 1969, 115 mins.Agnes Varda arrived in America, fell in love with Los Angeles and decided to make a film about her feelings for the city. Enlisting the aid of Rado and Ragni, the authors of ‘Hair’ plus Andy Warhol’s superstar, Viva, the project took shape.
Venue: Curzon Soho

2.00, End of the Road
Aram Avakian, USA, 1969, 107 mins.This private vision of a world in which everyone acts out his own fantasies is brilliant, bewildering and devastatingly funny. It shows an America that has flipped out, a gun-crazy country torn by a manylevelled madness. Introduced by writer Lee Hill. Very rare screenings.
Venue: Curzon Soho

9 JUNE Monday

7.00, The Trouble of Love
Helke Sander, Germany, 1983, 112 mins.Two women who are connected through their professional and political work have to deal with the fear and indecision of the man whom they both love.
Venue: Goethe Institute

17 JUNE Tuesday

6.30 + 8.15, Liberators Take Liberties Part 1 + 2
Helke Sander, Germany 1991 / 92, Part 1: 90mins + Part 2: 102mins. A two-part documentary investigating the practise of mass rape in Germany in 1945. In the first part the women speak, often for the first time, about the experience of violence. In the second part it is the children born as a consequence of these rapes who speak.
Venue: Goethe Institute

24 JUNE Tuesday

7.00, Village
Helke Sander, Germany, 2001, 90mins. In this ‘auto-biographical’ documentary, Helke Sander observes herself in the role of the city dweller who has moved to the countryside. She starts to delve into the history of ‘her’ small village.
Venue: Goethe Institute

NOVEMBER

UCL Festival of the Moving Image World Cinema in the ’60s
Venue: UCL Bloomsbury Theatre