1968 and Global Cinema

October 19–November 29, 2018

In conjunction with a new book, this series focuses on the radical cinema that emerged from the political and social upheavals of the late sixties.

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WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Ciné-tracts
Soleil Ô
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman
The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan—Summer in Sanrizuka

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Films
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Past Films

The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan—Summer in Sanrizuka
- Thursday, November 29 7 PM
Shinsuke Ogawa
Japan, 1968
Archival Print

Ogawa’s battle-scarred call-to-arms follows Japanese student activists and radical laborers fighting against forced eviction. A classic of activist documentary by an essential but little-known filmmaker.
Soleil Ô
- Saturday, November 17 5:30 PM
Med Hondo
Mauritania, 1970
New Digital Restoration

A laborer moves from West Africa to Paris in search of a better life, but finds instead a modern version of slavery, in this “scathing attack on colonialism” (Harvard Film Archive).

Introduction by Christina Gerhardt
Ciné-tracts
- Thursday, November 15 7 PM
Jean-Luc Godard, Jackie Raynal, Alain Resnais, Philippe Garrel, Gérard Fromanger, et al.
France, 1968
A selection of formally inventive, highly politicized short silent films made amid the strikes and uprisings of 1968 Paris.

Introduction by Julia Nelsen
As Above, So Below
- Wednesday, November 14 7 PM
Larry Clark
United States, 1973
Clark’s drama of post-Watts resistance and black power is a rediscovered masterpiece and a key work of the L.A. Rebellion. With Frances Bodomo’s short Everybody Dies!

Larry Clark, Ra Malika Imhotep, and Jamal Batts in Conversation
The Cow
- Sunday, November 11 7 PM
Dariush Mehrjui
Iran, 1968
This landmark of the Iranian New Wave is a portrait of village life where isolation and extreme poverty create their own social structure. “The first Iranian film to deal with the small-scale, the unredeemed and the unheroic” (Hamidreza Sadr).

Introduction by Targol Mesbah
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
- Saturday, November 3 5:30 PM
Dusan Makavejev
Yugoslavia, 1971
BAMPFA Collection Print
Film to Table dinner follows

Makavejev brings a surreal combinatory style and radical sexual politics to a docu-fictional exploration of Wilhelm Reich and his implications for world revolution.

Introduction by Pavle Levi
Out of the Vault: Radical Shorts
- Friday, November 2 4 PM
BAMPFA Collection Prints

This assembly of radical works encompasses local activism (Newsreel’s Black Panther and San Francisco State on Strike), global movements (Santiago Alvarez’s Now! and 79 Springtimes), and feminist statements (Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley’s Schmeerguntz).

Introduction by The Black Aesthetic
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman
- Friday, October 19 7 PM
Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Brazil, 1972
New Digital Restoration

A Frenchman captured by Indians learns the true meaning of assimilation in this landmark of postcolonial cinema-as-resistance, a slyly entertaining mixture of anthropology, black humor, political allegory, and ubiquitous nudity.

Introduction by Natalia Brizuela

1968 and Global Cinema

October 19–November 29, 2018

The year 1968 was a watershed that brought about radical political and social changes internationally. These changes are both reflected in and constitutive of radical new cinemas that emerged around that time, in part as a response to anticolonial wars of self-liberation and self-determination that were waged throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. The films reflect the vibrant anti-imperialist discourse that formed a key node of the social movements of the 1960s, exemplified by the responses to the US–Vietnam War.

This small series celebrates the publication of the book 1968 and Global Cinema by featuring films from around the globe, many in new restorations. We present a selection of Ciné-tracts by Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, and other French directors; Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow, marking the Iranian New Wave; Mauritanian filmmaker Med Hondo’s semiautobiographical Soleil Ô; Shinsuke Ogawa’s raw and vital The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan—Summer in Sanrizuka; Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Brazilian Cinema Novo classic How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman; Dusan Makavejev’s Yugoslavian provocation WR: Mysteries of the Organism; Larry Clark’s As Above, So Below, part of the L.A. Rebellion; and short radical films from the US and Cuba. 1968 and Global Cinema—the book and the film series—takes the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of May 1968 to examine lesser-known film cultures engaged in that moment’s politics and to provide new readings of key films from what has been called the “long 1960s.”

Christina Gerhardt, Guest Curator

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Series organized by Christina Gerhardt, coeditor with Sara Saljoughi of 1968 and Global Cinema, and Kathy Geritz, film curator. Out of the Vault is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Ciné-tracts presentation is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, with thanks to Amélie Garin-Davet and Natacha Pope; and in conjunction with the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley, with thanks to Julia Nelsen.

Supporter

National Endowment for the Arts
Supporter

Cultural Services of the French Embassy
Copresenter

Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley