New Directors, New Form

Apparently in the 1960s, film goes global -- which seems odd from this documentary, which has been pushing the concept of Russian and Japanese films (among others) since the first or second segment. But now we are venturing into eastern Europe...

We explore the Polish directors Andrzej Wajda (whose work is unknown to me) and Roman Polanski (whose work I have seen all of). Cousins considers "Fearless Vampire Killers" among Polanski's best work, which is an incredibly bold statement. I would tend to put it among his lowest.

We get a glimpse of the Czech New Wave, with such films as "Daisies" and "The Hand". I know practically nothing of Czech cinema, so this had me running out and picking u pa few items.

Of course, we cannot talk about 1960s film without getting to "Easy Rider" and Roger Corman. Hooray for artsy, pre-1970s entertainment and romance.

More bleak filmmaking in the artsy mode. We are introduced to some great directors of the sixties. Oneis Andrzej Wajda whose "Ashes and Diamonds" is highly provocative. Also from Poland, the genesis of Roman Polanski with his early film, "Knife in the Water." Now comes Milos Forman and Miklos Jancso and, most significantly, Andrei Tarkovsky. Rising high in the Japanese cinema is the great Nagisa Oshima with his quirky film and Shohei Imamura. Another proponent of the weird is Ritwik Ghatak. There are mentions of Andy Warhol, Dennis Hopper, Stanley Kubrick, and Walter Ruttmann. This series puts things out there in such haste that it is hard to make the connections necessary to completely understand the waves going through the film world. I think that the biggest strength of this whole series is to see for the first time or revisit many of these films.