Aug 7: Easy Rider
As the war in Vietnam rages, two dope-smoking motorcycle riders go on the road to look for the "real" America. Easy Rider was a cultural phenomenon that became synonymous with alienated youth of the 60s, and it was the film that made Jack Nicholson a star. Features a fabulous rock soundtrack. (Directed by Dennis Hopper; USA; 1969; 94min)

Aug 14: Midnight Cowboy
This Oscar-winning film (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay) features brilliant performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, and brings to the screen an unusually gritty realism in its portrayal of the streets of New York City. Handsome hustler Joe Buck (Voight) arrives from Texas only to be out-hustled by everyone else, including Ratso Rizzo (Hoffman), a con artist who dreams of moving to Florida. (Directed by John Schlesinger; US/UK; 1969; 113 min)

Aug 21: The Wild Bunch
"Well, killing a man isn't clean and quick and simple--it's bloody and awful. And maybe if enough people come to realize that shooting somebody isn't just fun and games, maybe we'll get somewhere." (Sam Peckinpah’s response to criticism of the graphic realism in this film) William Holden, Robert Ryan, and Ernest Borgnine star as the leaders of a grizzled crew of Texas bandits who ride into Mexico to meet their fate. The western, a genre steeped in legend, was a dying breed when Peckinpah unleashed this film as a response to the violence in our culture. (Directed by Sam Peckinpah; USA; 1969; 145min)

Aug 28: Medium Cool
Mixing fiction with real events of the 60s, this was acclaimed cinematographer Haskell Wexler’s first film as director. Character actor Robert Forster plays a TV newsman in Chicago, proud of his detached professionalism. As the Democratic convention approaches, he is thrust headlong into anarchy in the streets and on the convention floor. His prized detachment falls away as he watches Mayor Daley's cops clubbing unarmed protestors. Shooting with handheld cameras, Wexler moves seamlessly between the actors and the unplanned events. His dissection of the media's role in the shaping of reality spares no one, and Medium Cool is as relevant as ever. (Directed by Haskell Wexler; USA; 1969; 110min)

Aug 3-4:
Good Morning
This is Ozu’s madcap tale of the suburban Japanese family in crisis, and the threat comes in the form of a television. Predicting that "TV will produce 100 million idiots," a traditional father refuses to buy his two young sons their much-desired boob tube. As a neighborhood-wide quarrel results, small vignettes of other miniature crisis of Western culture vs. Japanese tradition are played out. The tragic-comic portrait evokes a radiant sense of life and change in a vital society. The amiable comedy demonstrates once again Ozu's cinematic mastery (receiving his government's Purple Ribbon Medal, one of Japan's highest honors). In his wry view of consumerist Japan, Good Morning revisits the basic premise of I Was Born, But... (1932) with an undimmed youthful enthusiasm for childhood rebellion and fart jokes. In Japanese with subtitles. (1959; 93 min)

Aug 10-11:
An Autumn Afternoon
An aging widower makes arrangements to have his favorite daughter married and seeks comfort in sake and old friends. The setting of modern day industrial Japan, with its neon signs, factory chimneys and rooftop golf, is lushly filmed in breathtaking color as Ozu constructs his last tale of the final stages of a Japanese family. This gentle film follows the father as he hears of yet another of his friend’s daughters being married and fears that his daughter will never leave his side, echoing Ozu’s earlier work, Late Spring. As the arrangements are made to set his daughter out on her own, the father reflects on his own life and finds that he is fast arriving at its end, and that he is essentially alone. This was Ozu's last film, and his mother, whom he had lived with for his entire life, died during its making. Autumn Afternoon is seen as a distillation of the themes and narrative motifs explored in 60 years of filmmaking. In Japanese with subtitles. (1962; 115min)