OCTOBER 1 - SPECIAL SEASON: CINEMA '68: THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING

October 1 - 7:00pm

Medium Cool

Haskell Wexler (1969) 110 mins

Fascinating & groundbreaking docu-drama centring on a TV newsreel cameraman (Robert Forster) & his attempts to capture events leading up to & including the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Director-writer-cameraman Wexler stages his drama amidst the actual traumatic events of the era, providing a brilliant McLuhan-esque meditation on race, war, politics, gender & the mass media’s role in the violent conflicts surging through American society. Vincent Canby called it “a kind of cinematic Guernica, a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion, fear & violence”. Music by Mike Bloomfield.

Imported 35mm print.

Preceded by An American Time Capsule Charles Braverman (1968) 3 mins. Condenses 200 years of American history into 3 volatile minutes.

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October 1 - 9:05pm

Petulia

Richard Lester (1968) 105 mins M

Petulia

One of the best films of the ‘60s is a tragi-comedy about human isolation, set against the trippy San Francisco scene, & centred upon the relationship between a divorced surgeon (George C. Scott) & a self-styled oddball (Julie Christie) married to the beautiful but psychotic Richard Chamberlain. Luminously shot by Nicolas Roeg, Lester’s almost futuristic & Resnais-influenced take on the ennui accompanying the era’s freedoms is an extraordinary combination of European American modernity. Also featuring Joseph Cotten, The Grateful Dead & Big Brother & the Holding Company.

Preceded by Chiefs Richard Leacock (1969) 20 mins. A seemingly matter-of-fact report on a police chiefs’ Honolulu convention in 1968 seethes with an underlying tension & violence.

Imported 35mm print.