Panelists participating in the discussion following the films are:
Bruce Conner, filmmaker, sculptor, painter, musician, draftsman, dancer.
Tom Luddy, former film curator at Pacific Film Archive, now director of special projects for Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, and producer of the soon-to-be-released film Mishima.
R. G. Davis, free-lance stage director, founder of the R. G. Davis Mime Troupe (1959-1963) and founder and director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe (1963-1970).
Peter Gessner, filmmaker, founding member of Newsreel and Cinemanifest collective.

“Waking from a numbing, Eisenhower-induced Deep Sleep, American artists, poets, dancers and filmmakers surfaced in splendid profusion in the early 1960s to taunt and nibble at the margins of the old order. The duffle coats and black stockings of Beatitude gave way to long hair, happenings and chemical consciousness. Most artists, however, continued to work their own sides of the cordon sanitaire, separating the experimental from the political. Shadows from the conflagrations in Vietnam, in Newark, and in Harlem entered the private world of lofts and studios and by 1966, filmmakers began to signal to each other through the flames.
“It was the year that Jonas Mekas, the enfant-terrible of the New York underground, fresh from introducing Andy Warhol's films to the world, organized America
Today, an unusual program of films dealing experimentally with social issues and concerns. A year later, Hilary Harris, Shirley Clarke and others put out a call for three-minute statements against the war in Vietnam; over a hundred submissions were turned in, becoming For Life, Against the War. The entire role and function of the artist in a world of napalm and billy clubs was brought into question; Bruce Conner and Shirley Clarke contributed black leader punched with holes, which seemed to suggest that the atrocity of Vietnam eclipsed the artist's right to function. Others cut and pasted from nightly newscasts, struggling, often unsuccessfully, to avoid aestheticizing the very things they protested against. The age-old question of art-and-politics was once more up for grabs.” Peter Gessner

A Movie: “A montage of found materials from fact (newsreels) and fiction (old movies). Cliches and horrors make a rapid collage....” (Brian O'Doherty, N.Y. Times). A film by Bruce Conner. (1957, 12 mins, Print from PFA Collection)
America Today Program:
Mass for the Dakota Sioux: “The dedication is to the religious people who were destroyed by the civilization which evolved the Mass.” (B.B.) A film by Bruce Bailie. (1963-64, 24 mins, Print from PFA Collection)
Report from Millbrook: “Images: the residence of Timothy Leary, the surrounding nature...in Summer, 1965. Soundtrack: an interview with Quinlain, Sheriff of Millbrook, who made the Leary arrest,...by East Village Other reporter, Spring, 1966.” (J.M.) A film by Jonas Mekas. (1966, 12 mins, Color)
Time of the Locust: “A film about the war in Vietnam, compiled from American newsfilm, combat footage shot by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, and suppressed film taken by Japanese cameramen.” (P.G.) A film by Peter Gessner. (1966, 12 mins)
Troublemakers: Young SDS militants (including Tom Hayden, Robert Kramer) involved in community organizing in a Newark, N.J. ghetto. “...the only film I know that preaches revolution. It says: Look what these people went through and with what patience...and not a dent was made” (Jonas Mekas). A film by Robert Machover and Norman Fruchter. (1966, 54 mins)
For Life, Against the War: Selections from the Week of the Angry Arts call for films. Among the contributors are Robert Breer, Hilary Harris, Storm De Hirsch, Leo Hurwitz, Richard Preston, Lee Savage, Stan Vanderbeek. (1967, 38 mins, B&W and Color)