Berkeleyan

Jean-Luc Godard (above), the French filmmaker, was among the hundreds of thousands of Parisians who participated in the epochal protests of May 1968, as shown in this photo taken by Serge Hambourg, who chronicled the events of that May for a French magazine. Hambourg's photos are on exhibit through June 1 at the Berkeley Art Museum. (Photo by Serge Hambourg, courtesy Hood Museum of Art)

Coming soon: ‘The Clash of ’68’

By Jonathan King, Public Affairs | 19 March 2008

Steve Seid, the Pacific Film Archive’s video curator, has assembled a dozen films from the 1960s and ’70s to complement the Hambourg photo exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. Though none of them take as their theme the events of Paris ’68, at least one — Chris Marker’s A Grin Without a Cat — refers to them, while another, Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise, appears to foreshadow them.

But the point, says Seid, is not to reiterate Hambourg’s documentary approach to events transpiring before his eyes, but to show how the spirit of revolt animated filmmakers for more than a decade, both before the events of May ’68 and afterward.

The films in the “Clash of ’68” series, and their screening dates and times:

Thursday, March 27, 8:30 p.m.
Before the Revolution, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 1964)

Saturday, March 29, 6:30 p.m.
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, dir. Alain Tanner (Switzerland, 1976)

Wednesday, April 2, 7 p.m.
A Grin Without a Cat, dir. Chris Marker (France, 1977/1988)
Introduced by Larry Bensky

Friday, April 4, 9:15 p.m.
La Chinoise, dir. Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1967)

Saturday, April 5, 6:30 p.m.
The Battle of Algiers, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo (Italy/Algeria, 1966)

Thursday, April 10, 6:30 p.m.
1973, dir. Antonino Isordia (Mexico, 2005); Comunicados [short] (Mexico, 1968)

Thursday, April 10, 9 p.m.
The Man Who Left His Will on Film, dir. Nagisha Osima (Japan, 1970)

Friday, April 18, 9 p.m.
The Revolutionary, dir. Paul Williams (U.S., 1970)

Saturday, April 19, 6 p.m.
Queimada! dir. Gillo Pontecorvo (Italy/France, 1969)

Saturday, April 19, 8:45 p.m.
Z, dir. Costa-Gavras (France/Algeria, 1969)

Sunday, April 20, 1-4 p.m. (Part 1) and 5-8 p.m. (Part 2)
La Commune (Paris, 1871), dir. Peter Watkins (France, 2000)

Wednesday, April 23, 7:30 p.m.
Society of the Spectacle, dir. Guy Debord (France, 1973) Introduced by Ken Knabb