"MAY '68"

Skoller’s "Promise of Happiness" +
In conjunction with hundreds of other tributes across the globe, our homage to the revolutionary fervor of 40 years ago is here focused on the Vietnamese War of Liberation. Jeffrey Skoller’s 35-min. meditation on the Southeast Asian nation four decades after the Tet Offensive affords a complex sense of the Revolution’s success. In person, Skoller unfolds his themes of utopia, democracy, and disappointment, in thoughtful opening remarks and engaged Q&A. Rhapsodizing on similar issues of national independence,
but in dramatic stylistic contrast, Santiago Alvarez’s half-hr. "79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh" is an acknowledged masterwork of Cuban cinema that advances anti-imperialist solidarity ever so artfully. Supporting this pair of poetic political essays are a passel of topical shorts: the U.S. Army’s "Know Your Enemy", Mark Brecke’s "War as a Second Language" (trailer),
Bill Daniel/Warren Haack’s "SSSS", and Travis Wilkerson’s "National Archives".