Stephen Lighthill is a noted cinematographer who has shot many important documentaries made in the Bay Area, including Berkeley in the Sixties. Michael Smith was one of the Oakland Seven, antiwar activists tried for conspiracy in 1968; he was expelled from UC Berkeley for his antiwar activities. Gar Smith is a lifelong environmental journalist and former editor of Earth Island Journal who participated in the October 1965 protests.

Though it inspired the political engagement of thousands of young activists, the Free Speech Movement lasted but a few months. It was quickly eclipsed by the mounting urgency of the Vietnam War as the actions of the United States escalated abroad. Founded in Berkeley, the Vietnam Day Committee, led by Jerry Rubin and others, was the first large-scale resistance to the war. Jerry Stoll's formidable but forgotten film, Sons and Daughters, tracks a two-day protest (October 15 and 16, 1965) in which thousands of antiwar activists marched from Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus to the Oakland Army Terminal, where GIs were processed for overseas duty. Each day the marchers were callously turned away by hundreds of Oakland's finest, along with a contingent of Hell's Angels. This ambitious portrait of a protest follows with due intimacy the details of a demonstration, from the minutiae of mimeographing flyers and heated strategy sessions, to the public rallies-with activists like Rubin, Malvina Reynolds, Robert Scheer, Kay Boyle, and others-needed to bolster broad support. Sons and Daughters stands with the protestors, using blunt footage of the “police action” in Southeast Asia and a voice-over by Janet Pugh that empathizes with a generation disillusioned by America's military adventures. With a soundtrack composed by jazz greats Virgil Gonsalves and Jon Hendricks, plus two songs performed by the Grateful Dead.