Too Early to Say: 1968

To see or hear ‘1968’ referenced, as an isolated concept, is to be cued into—is to be directed towards—a particular conflux of socio-political events. The common association is Paris: wildcat strikes, widespread occupations, millions in the streets, a government in flight. But let’s cast the net wider. In the same year we encounter a constellation of crises, and of radicalisation and violent countermeasures: the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia; the so-called March Events in Poland; left-wing insurgencies in Malaysia and Brazil; the pivotal Tet Offensive and the peak of American military involvement in Vietnam; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; the further development of the Apollo space programme.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!