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Hippie Modernism

The BAMPFA in Berkeley will show “Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture, 1964– 1974”, a four-month film series focused on the radical cinema of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Courtesy of the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, The Sommer Collection. © CCA/C Archives at California College of the Arts Libraries, San Francisco, California. Photographs by Robert Sommer

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) announces “Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture, 1964– 1974”, a four-month film series focused on the radical cinema of the 1960s and early 1970s. The series is shown in conjunction with “Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia”, a major exhibition examining the intersection of the radical art, architecture, and design of the counterculture period.

**Top:** Courtesy of the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, The Sommer Collection. © CCA/C Archives at California College of the Arts Libraries, San Francisco, California. Photographs by Robert Sommer **Above:** Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida, CC5 Hendrixwar/Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress, 1973

Building on Hippie Modernism’s exploration of artistic responses to the social, cultural, and political ferment of the 1960s and 1970s, Cinema and the Counterculture examines the politically charged, aesthetically innovative filmmaking that defined this era. Encompassing documentary, fiction, and experimental cinema—often in the course of a single work—the films in this series intersected with emerging counterculture movements, taking the pulse of the social, political, and aesthetic upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Anderson William Lloyd and Gary Anderson with the recycle symbol at the Container Corporation of America / Isaac Abrams, Hello Dali, 1965. Courtesy the artist — **Left:** Anderson William Lloyd and Gary Anderson with the recycle symbol at the Container Corporation of America. **Right:** Isaac Abrams, Hello Dali, 1965. Courtesy the artist

While mass media and commercial movies frequently portrayed the counterculture as naive and ineffectual or violent and dangerous—a distinction often drawn along class and color lines—some filmmakers offered alternative perspectives. From intricate avant-garde animations to critical portraits of pop stars and freedom fighters, Hippie Modernism: Cinema and Counterculture is replete with images that remain as vital and compelling today as they were some fifty years ago.