Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2012

The world order seemed to come to an end in 1968, when political protests rocked Paris, Prague, Tokyo and other cities around the world and the landmark year has new relevance amidst the ongoing Occupy movements. Shibuya’s Auditorium (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; http://a-shibuya.jp) is screening a festival of two dozen films that give a view of the turbulent year 1968, January 28-February 3. Japanese directors such as Nagisa Oshima and Koji Wakamatsu cut their teeth making films that mixed scripted action with actual footage of student uprisings in the streets of Tokyo. Oshima’s black farce Death by Hanging (1968) is in the program lineup, as well as Wakamatsu’s United Red Army (2008; pictured), which recreates the bloody end of the leftist radical group. The most recent film is My Back Pages (2011), about a journalist and a student leader whose paths cross during a demonstration, a story based on screenwriter Saburo Kawamoto’s own experience. Giving an international perspective are Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003), which tells the story of an American caught up in the student protests of Paris, and Jean-Luc Godard’s semi-documentary Le vent d’est (1969). http://eigasai1968.com