Review: Berkeley in the Sixties is a well-spoken, descriptive explanation of the protest movement, how it evolved over the decade, and how it influenced social, political and cultural protests known around the nation.  It notably achieves this through interviews with people who lived through the wild scenes who have since been able to reflect upon how their actions impacted history. The entire documentary is incredibly detailed and rarely boring, although it definitely lacks some of the bells and whistles some popular documentaries in the 2000’s tend to flaunt.  The story follows a nice progression starting with the 1960 protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee and it goes through an impressive list of student-involved movements that touched on Civil Rights issues, free speech, and opposition to the Vietnam War, among others. In some of the film’s more interesting scenes, it is remarkable to hear some of the interview subjects explain how frightened they were about what they could lose by participating in the various rallies but they were wiling to take the leap.  Just as meaningful were the sequences in which people explained what did not go well by any definition. The director uses the era’s newsreel footage well, at times covering some of the more brutal scenes with ironic or catchy songs, like one scene’s risky but well-executed use of CCR’s Fortunate Son.  When the film employs music, though, it definitely does so in a more reserved fashion than some other recent Vietnam documentaries like the (literally) animated Chicago 10.  Notably, in one or two of the scenes, the footage is given time to breath without music or narration or anything but the pictures of the event.  It’s still pretty shocking to see students being hurled down stone staircases as if they were on a carnival ride and the director seems to know the audience well enough to not add in anything extra. At times the documentary feels either a little long or a little slow, but not enough to let the viewer lose interest if they are truly involved with what is happening.  Also, the tone of the film is just slightly one sided but it’s more entertaining to watch the sequence of events and their historical impact than to focus on a possible bias. Again, sequences in which the students or their supporters look back to discuss aspects that went overboard helped prevent the film from having too strong of a bias. So even though the film may not look as fancy as some modern documentaries, it makes its points nicely and it does its duty in explaining many key stories from the campus that seemed to perfectly embody the wild decade. Review by Ryan Pollyea Informative: 4- The filmmakers clearly did their research and poured a lot of it into the final product Entertainment: 3.5- It’s a little slow at times but it's all worth it in the end Technical: 4- The film’s style and techniques are simple but effective Overall: 3.5- Great, well researched documentary that may not entirely capture the attention of the modern audience but is still great
 
Format: DVD Year: 1990 Running Time: 117 minutes Distributor: First Run Features Producer: Mark Kitchell Director: Mark Kitchell Date Reviewed: 7/21/09 Story: “University of California, Berkeley, alumni recount how their quiet school became the epicenter of 1960s campus activism, starting with the free speech movement and evolving into organized opposition to the Vietnam War. The students also championed civil rights, the women's movement and the Black Panther party.” (Netflix)