Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23365 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-12-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 117 minutes

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

Review
Magnificent! Deserves to be seen by anyone interested in a better America! --San Francisco Examiner

Review
A potent blast from the past! --New York Times

Customer Reviews

One of my all time Favorites
Berkeley in the Sixties is a well done documentary which does an excellent job of communicating the issues and events of one of the most pivotal decades of the twentieth century. Berkeley was the center of the social upheaval which defined the sixties and understanding what happened there helps us to understand the change and chaos which woke up America. Although a documentary, this video is amazingly easy to watch. While its appeal is no doubt greatest to those of us who were part of the events depicted, I think it would also interest anyone who would like to better understand what really happened during that time. It would be equally useful in an American history class or as an evening's entertainment. We have seen in several times in our home and it remains a favorite.

Fabric of 60s Counterculture Politics: Weaving the Threads
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 characterized 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.

Interesting look into Berkeley in the '60s
As a student of American History, this is certainly one of the most interesting films I've had the opportunity to view. From the footage of Mario Savio's arrest at the Regents' forum to the interviews with former Black Panther leaders and also Vietnam draftees, there is a lot of raw human emotion and reaction captured on tape. Truly an excellent documentary that seeks to be more than a documentary-- and succeeds in becoming a true reflection of life.