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Berkeley in the Sixties

Play trailer Poster for Berkeley in the Sixties 1990 1h 57m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 6 Reviews 76% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
In 1964 the Berkeley campus of the University of California became the seedbed of the nascent antiwar movement when student demonstrations culminated in the mass arrest of hundreds of protesters. Combining newsreel footage with interviews with some of the main figures of the protests, documentary filmmaker Mark Kitchell sheds light on the first, galvanizing stirrings of the Free Speech Movement and its subsequent influence on late-1960s radicalism.
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Berkeley in the Sixties

Critics Reviews

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com 04/30/2011
B
A significant docu in which the director lets his rich material speak for itself Go to Full Review
Ken Hanke Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC) 09/29/2005
4/5
It's as relevant today as ever. Go to Full Review
Kurt Dahlke Apollo Guide 01/21/2003
85/100
John A. Nesbit Old School Reviews 01/27/2002
A-
...as complete a picture as possible in less than two hours. And you don't even have to smell the tear gas. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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06/21/2012 The students' rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the resulting riots are romanticized in this documentary. It's hard to watch this film without recognizing what happened to the political energy of the sixties during the eighties. Yuppie and Baby Boomer activists became soccer moms and hockey dads more concerned about soybean futures than what their former nemesis, Reagan, was doing to the country. But the interviewees were carefully chosen: those who continued the plights of their youth are the only ones represented in the film. What is more, the police and university administrators come off as universally deplorable, anti-democratic fascists; the police look more like storm troopers than cops. All this is not to say that I didn't learn anything from the film or that it was bad, but it's certainly an agenda film, and the criticisms of its heroes are limited to not having a complete political agenda - a criticism that is light and venial. Overall, I think this is a film for a specific audience, one that is comprised of people who wish to delight in the sixties no matter how myopic they look at the time. See more 10/24/2011 it was interesting i guess, good to watch in classes See more 04/22/2011 Nice recounting of the evolution (or devolution) of the Berkeley protest movement throughout the '60s. Told from the points of view of those intimately involved as protestors, so don't expect a balanced treatment of the subject. Still includes an adequate amount of information to make it worth your while, if you're interested in the subject. See more 04/15/2010 Very thorough and well researched documentary. The interview are very informative. Great use of archive footage. Informative and always interesting. Very well edited and a lot of work went into piecing it all together. One flaw is the length at almost two hours. See more 04/15/2010 73/100. Very thorough and well researched documentary. The interview are very informative. Great use of archive footage. Informative and always interesting. Very well edited and a lot of work went into piecing it all together. One flaw is the length at almost two hours. See more 11/09/2009 I was born in the wrong era. I like to think that I would have been among the Berekley political activists, as opposed to the drugged-out San Francisco hippies. See more Read all reviews
Berkeley in the Sixties

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Movie Info

Synopsis In 1964 the Berkeley campus of the University of California became the seedbed of the nascent antiwar movement when student demonstrations culminated in the mass arrest of hundreds of protesters. Combining newsreel footage with interviews with some of the main figures of the protests, documentary filmmaker Mark Kitchell sheds light on the first, galvanizing stirrings of the Free Speech Movement and its subsequent influence on late-1960s radicalism.
Director
Mark Kitchell
Producer
Mark Kitchell
Screenwriter
Mark Kitchell, Susan Griffin, Stephen Most
Distributor
California Newsreel, First Run
Production Co
Kitchell Films, P.O.V. Theatricals
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Jan 1, 1990, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Nov 3, 2021
Runtime
1h 57m
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