Berkeley in the Sixties

Starring:Robert Mitchum
Director: Mark Kitchell
Studio: First Run Features
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

This outstanding documentary by Mark Kitchell, six years in the making, is a comprehensive and insightful story of campus and community activism as born at the University of California at Berkeley. Using extensive archival footage and bridging the distance between past and present with more recent interviews, Kitchell shows how a 1960 protest aimed at the House Un-American Activities Committee was the launching point for the Free Speech movement, which evolved into organized opposition against the Vietnam War, support for the Black Panther party, and the feminist movement. No simple valentine to student-demonstration days, the film brilliantly uses contemporary perspective to show how great legacies and inevitable failures were simultaneously born in a charged atmosphere. Not to be missed. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews:

the soul of the 60s distilled.......2006-08-03

This documentary goes to great lengths to show how the free speech movement in Berkeley devolved into a revolutionary struggle and lays much of that blame on campus activistst becoming so enamored of the Black Panthers -- who themselves had a keen instinct on how to manipulate their image in the media to Macy's Day float-size proportions -- that they gave up the driver's seat or exited the vehicle altogether. Through video footage of protests and riots, and interviews with key players who have obviously agonized about how things turned out and how they could have turned out differently, a well-sketched picture emerges of the political life of the '60s, a time which may never be repeated but whose ripples hopefully will never give way to stillness.

What America Is Really Like.......2006-02-25

Berkely in the Sixties explores one of the worst catastrophes in American History. When the student movement began in the fall of 1964, students wanted the freedom of political protest on campus at the University of California. The administration forbade any student groups related to non-campus activities. The students all banded together and staged a sit-in which captured national attention and brought the university to a standstill.

When it ended in the summer of 1969, police gassed and shot American citizens as if, as one lady said, "we were the Viet Cong." In between was MLK, The Black Panthers, and Vietnam. This film is a must-see for all Americans. The deleted scenes are lengthy and a bit dry, but are worth viewing.

Ironically, the University of California describes itself as "a lively place of student activism," a whitewash of the administration's brutality against its students and faculty members who sympathized with the student's cause.

Boring.......2006-01-13

I am very sympathetic to the"movement" of the Sixties, and took an active part in it, but I find this type of "talking heads" documentary boring as hell, even though it is interspersed with news footage.
An example of a truly great documenary of the time is the film "The War at Home", available on video (1979, director Glenn Silber).

Fabric of 60s Counterculture Politics: Weaving the Threads .......2005-01-15

This is a superb, valuable documentary.

Berkeley was at the epicenter as the counterculture politics of the '60s emerged. And revisiting the political ferment of '60s Berkeley can offer an unusually helpful overview of these interwoven political currents. This film does that very, very well. It rises far,far above films which simply recount the intense experimentation with sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll that eventually charcacterized the counterculture. This film focuses on the often-less-understood, and fascinating, politics of the time.

The fascinating footage (including early glimpses at Reagan as a
relatively new "pol"), the deft editing, the years-later retrospective reflections of "now-grown-up" participants in the Berkeley "FSM" (Free Speech Movement) -- these are all very engaging, and beautifully assembled. But what makes the film great for me is its clarity in reflecting the interplay of counterculture themes: the movements for free speech and for civil rights, the movement against the Vietnam War, and assertion of the new feminism. Along with the energetic pursuit of "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll," these elements - blended into one 'tsunami' of a movement -- were experienced by us all coming of age during that time, throughout the US and throughout much of the world. But as a young person during that era, who became very swept up in the self-proclaimed "dawning of the Age of Aquarius," I recall also feeling unclear on how these ideological components -- which otherwise seemed to me distinct and substantively unrelated - became intertwined in the social politics of that era.

Whether the film is slanted, and whether "The Movement" was positive or negative, seem to me besides the point. The Movement was; like it or not, that reality is indisputable. From varying perspectives, our entire culture experienced it, and was affected by it. Most of the many millions of us on college campuses during that time were forever changed -- for good, for ill, or both. This film presents the most coherent depiction I've seen of how this happened, what it's "logic" was - and manages to do so engagingly, without becoming pedantic. That's a whole lot for one film to do, even for someone who respects and loves film as our culture's greatest current art form.

Nice.......2004-03-19

I would like to tell you a little bit about the documentary by Mark Kitchell entitled Berkeley in the Sixties. This film is a great synopsis of the 60s civil rights and counter culture movements based out of UC Berkeley. The film was released in 1990 and contains interviews with everybody from members of the Black Panthers to Country Joe and the Fish. It starts at the beginning of the sixties with the events that would eventually lead to the first protest to the hippies and Peoples Park and so on, interviewing people even into the late 80s. The film kept my attention and was very educational.

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