MOVIE MOJO
'Summer of Love' short taste of '60s
by Bob Longino
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 13, 2007
At Eyedrum this month, the moon is definitely in the Seventh House.
On July 21, the film program "Summer of Love: Sex, Drugs, Rock, Art and Protest
in the Counterculture Circa 1967" will include at least seven experimental and
documentary shorts expressing the rage, political activism and edgy artistic
nature of the era.
"Obviously, it was a very colorful time," says Eyedrum curator Andy Ditzler, who
gathered the rare films for the program. "It struck me that there are a lot of
parallels between then and now --- the increasingly popular unrest. I'm really
interested in the imagery of the last anti-war movement."
The films do run the gamut of emotions, thought and artistic expression.
Robert Cowan's nine-minute 1968 "Rockflow" is a music video-style celebration of
edgy fashion and rock music. It was filmed during a gallery show at New York's
famed Electric Circus, a hotspot of social expression from 1967 to 1971.
David Ringo's 20-minute 1967 documentary "March on Washington" chronicles with
footage and sound, but no narration, a mass demonstration in the capital that
culminated with both flowers and tear gas at the Pentagon.
Other films include Jud Yalkut's 1966 "Turn, Turn, Turn, " a 10-minute explosion
of colors and images that distorts and builds upon the Byrds' version of Pete
Seeger's song; Yalkut and Nam June Paik's three-minute 1969 "Beatles
Electroniques," an artistic play on the images and music of the era's strongest
musical force; and Yalkut's out-there 1967 filming of "Kusama's
Self-Obliteration," a 24-minute ride into the bizarre and sexually explicit
performance art of Japan's Yayoi Kusama.
"Summer of Love" will begin at 8 p.m. July 21 at Eyedrum, 290 Martin Luther King
Jr. Drive., Suite 8. Admission will be $5. www.eyedrum.org.
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