A Film Like Any Other

In 1968 Joan Bakewell was one of the few female TV presenters, fronting the BBC's Late Night Line-Up and addressing daily the most pressing issues of the time. In this film she looks back at the events that led to what for many became the defining event of that extraordinarily turbulent year - the protests in France in May. While the rest of the world was in turmoil, with the Vietnam War causing increasing dissent, the Civil Rights movement growing in intensity and young people finding new ways of expressing themselves, as 1968 began it seemed to France's president, General de Gaulle, that his country was immune to the kind of protest sweeping the rest of the world.

Behind the gas masks of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, the often very young activists are just as diverse as the youths of the rest of the world. But they share a demand for democracy and freedom. They have the will and the courage to fight – and they can see that things are going in the wrong direction in the small island city, which officially has autonomy under China but is now tightening its grip and demanding that ‘troublemakers’ be put away or silenced. Amid the violent protests, we meet a 21-year-old student, a teenage couple and a new father.

A documentary about the end of the student movement in 1972 and the lynching of Daizaburo Kawaguchi, a student at Waseda University. The documentary interweaves testimonies from japanese intellectuals and a short play, written and directed by Shôji Kôkami, about the murder.

Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.

L, a student in India witness to the government's violent response to university protests, writes letters to her estranged lover while he is away.

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

The film is about a protest provoked when the university decided to restrict access to sports facilities to athletes, cutting out all other students. This is, strictly speaking, not a Prokino film. It was produced by the Waseda University Film Circle, which was organized by Kawazoe Shiro. Feature film directors Yamamoto Satsuo and Taniguchi Senkichi were apparently students at Waseda at the time and participated in the production.

Students seeking greater control over the hiring of faculty occupy the offices of the Political Science Department at McGill University. The film crew lives with the students and follows their action through confusion, argument, dissent, and negotiations with faculty. The result is an intimate view of a student political action.

The Vietnam War protest movement from the student point of view is the basis for this documentary shot in the San Francisco Bay area and dealing mainly with a protest march from the University of California to the Oakland Army Terminal in 1966.

When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Contrasting radical mobs, anarchy, and 1960s counterculture with footage of American manufacturing and innovation, this film celebrates the concept of American exceptionalism and argues that anti-Vietnam War protesters were influenced by communism, atheism, and immorality. Set mostly in a university library, this political debate between a medical student, his 1770s ancestor, and a history professor is a sequel to the 1972 National Education Program film, Brink of Disaster! Two additional characters appear in this drama: a 19th-century steamboat captain, and the student’s grandfather - an early 20th-century automobile worker. The National Education Program at Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas created a variety of widely-distributed anti-communism films from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s.

A student is held up in the library while a riot rages outside. As SDS protesters head to burn the library down, he has to fend them off with his baseball bat. This film opens with actual footage of civil disturbances in the 1960s, and moves on to images of historical American figures.

Adrien Brody is best known for his performances on screen. But in The Intern, he trades Hollywood for Stuttgart, joining the team at the Porsche Factory as a new intern. Watch as he immerses himself in the world of Porsche, working side by side with the people who bring the brand to life. The Intern - a documentary film by Adrien Brody.

David Gelb (Jiro Dreams of Sushi) tackles another venerable, beloved, and long-standing institution: the Mustang, crown jewel of the Ford fleet. Only this institution is in turmoil. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Mustang approaches and the car industry struggles through the deepest trough of the financial crisis, Ford launches a redesign. Now the jobs of workers at Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant, the expectations of the thousands of Mustang devotees, and the livelihood of the city of Detroit are all placed squarely on the shoulders of Dave Pericak. As chief program engineer, he will guide the 2015 Mustang from assembly floor to showroom—if only he can get that vibration out of the steering wheel.

The film speaks of student demonstrations in Belgrade, 1969 and of the critical quality, enthusiasm and discipline of this form of protest. It was the most powerful public criticism of "red bourgeoisie" - members of communist apparatus, who suppressed creativity and affirmation of new generations throughout Eastern block.

Discover the story of the greatest civil rights movement most people have never heard about. During eight tumultuous days in 1988 at the world's only Deaf university, four students must find a way to lead a revolution—and change the course of history.

In the summer of revolt 1968, student Leobardo López Aretche captured the protests in Mexico City, and the state’s brutal response, up close – and like many of his subjects and fellow comrades, would pay a high price for his audacity. Fifty years later, his movie is no longer a secret.

Intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Rhythm uses rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, synchronizing it to African drum music. The sponsor was horrified by the music and suspicious of the way a worker was shown winking at the camera; although Rhythm won first prize at a New York advertising festival, it was disqualified because Chrysler had never given it a television screening. P. Adams Sitney wrote, “Although his reputation has been sustained by the invention of direct painting on film, Lye deserves equal credit as one of the great masters of montage.” And in Film Culture, Jonas Mekas said to Peter Kubelka, “Have you seen Len Lye’s 50-second automobile commercial? Nothing happens there…except that it’s filled with some kind of secret action of cinema.” - Harvard Film Archive

What remains of the 2012 Quebec student protests? Little has changed in the decade that ensued. Rodrigue Jean and Arnaud Valade exhume images of the battles, recorded live and relayed through the mass media, that flared up as anger and indignation went head-to-head with the rhetoric of power. Against these divisive images, the filmmakers overlay a historical perspective of the state and its police in Montreal, Quebec and Canada, delving into the roots of sanctioned violence. Their compelling glance at the past is, of course, a cry that continues to echo in the present day. While the voices have been silenced, revolt still brews. All it takes is a spark...

The film chronicles the beginning of the student protest following the death of student Benno Ohnesorg in Berlin in June of 1967.