CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing “Dancin’ in the Streets” on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park.
Author: Jon W.
Set during the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and the United Arab Republic this story of familial and national divisions has become one of Chahine’s most popular films in festivals and retrospectives. A young policeman’s adoptive father occupies a high post in the force, while his biological father is reputed to have been a left-wing activist. Raouf begins to search for those who might have known his real father, while his half-brother, stationed on the Sinai front, prepares for battle.
A ferry crosses the river. The work of the ferry is never-ending. It is a boat that transports people from one shore to another, from one country to another, without ever stopping, regardless of the changing seasons. It is a brief portrayal of Piedruja-Druja, on the border of Latvia and Belarus, at the beginning of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union began to crumble and Latvia gained its independence.
David Anderson’s waking dream is a poetic animated journey through the rich fantasy life of a child’s unconscious, combining elaborate cut-outs, intricate drawn cell animation and live action. A young boy finds himself in a mysterious express train travelling through a forbodeing and surreal landscape.
Between 1986 and 1990, Arthur Aristakisian lived among the tramps and beggars of the city: drug addicts, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped, and blind people. LADONI is the result of these four years. The film follows the beggars in their tough daily lives. Aristakisian has a biblical view of these outcasts, which is particularly expressed by the poetic voice over, intoning philosophic-spiritual reflections of a father who is talking to his unborn (aborted) child. According to Aristakisian, this refers to the direct cause for his film: the confusion that came over him when his girlfriend had an abortion.
A low-budget tale about young lovers on the run from an uncaring adult world – they just want to get married but are thwarted at every turn – remains something of landmark in English-Canadian feature production. Sidney J. Furie’s directorial debut.
In this semi-autobiographical, semi-experimental film (described by its makers as “Huck Finn on coke – a memoir of the drug generation”) the characters bear the same names as the actors. Steve Lack is a suave, funky drug dealer, artist and guru to a street community “family” in Montreal. But the group is threatened from within and without. Brawley has turned from coke to heroin and Pierre follows suit. The group’s latest shipment of cocaine sits in a locker in Windsor station surrounded by cops, so the family can’t get at it. At the same time, a sociology student, Moyle, is doing his thesis on Lack and the family and has insinuated himself into the group.
Using the eternal triangle as the main theme, the film shows how six different countries might deal with the moment a husband returns home unexpectedly to find his wife with a lover, with the same three actors playing all the roles. The film also parodies the well known styles of the prominent directors and stars of each country at the time the film was made.