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Last Summer Won't Happen
A Film by Peter Gessner
& Tom Hurwitz
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Last Summer Won't Happen is included on the same DVD as Time of the Locust
Shot in 1968, one year after the Summer of Love, LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN is a critical yet sympathetic examination of the anti-war movement in New York City. The film traces the development of a group of activists on the Lower East Side. We see their growth from isolated, alienated individuals to a politically empowered community.

Filmed between the protests at the Pentagon and the demonstrations at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, it includes portraits of Abbie Hoffman, editor Paul Krassner, folksinger Phil Ochs and anarchist Tom "Osha" Neumann.

"Peter Gessner pioneered the anti-Vietnam war filmmaking movement with his 1966 Time of the Locust, one of the first, if not the very first documentaries to take aim at the war. Today, it retains its ability to stir and anger. Two years later, he came back with Last Summer Won't Happen, an unsentimental, if affectionate behind the scenes look at the Yippies of New York's Lower East Side on the eve of that year's notorious Democratic Convention, as Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krasner, and Phi Ochs laugh, argue, and plot their political trajectories. Must see films for those who were there and those who were not." —Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Down and Dirty Pictures
"Last Summer Won't Happen is an unsentimental, if affectionate behind the scenes look at the Yippies of New York's Lower East Side on the eve of that year's notorious Democratic Convention, as Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krasner, and Phi Ochs laugh,argue, and plot their political trajectories. Must see films for those who were there and those who were not." —Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, and Down and Dirty Pictures


"While LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN is ostensibly about life in New York's East Village, its essential concern is with young revolutionists who find the hippies a useful symbol of revolt against capitalism, materialism, and technology. It is a fascinating film, troubling and troubled, and its jumble of styles encompasses the lyrical, pseudo-dramatic, didactic and auto-critical... it is born of an uncertainty about new ways of organizing life and art."—Joseph Morgenstern, Newsweek

"A useful counter-balance... to the sentimental view of hippies given by the commercial cinema..."—The Daily Telegraph

"The filmmakers did not limit themselves to a task of mere information, nor were they cut off by the wall that a camera often creates: successfully assimilated with their tools, they found themselves 'inside' the milieu, realizing the sine qua non of cinema verite..."—Bianco e Nero

"There have been a lot of films and docs that consider the aftereffects of 1967's Summer of Love, but this is the original and still the best." —Video TapeWorm

"As good an introduction to the sixties as I can think of." —Louis Proyect, Counterpunch

"The footage of old New York is priceless." —J. Hoberman, Artinfo

"Filmed with a sense of urgency." —Melissa Anderson, Artforum

"A remarkable testament to a time and a movement, delivered in a manner which I have not seen anywhere else." —TrustMovies

1968 New York Film Festival
1969 Festival dei Popoli (Florence, Italy)
Cineprobe Series, New York Museum of Modern Art (1970)
  

58 minutes / color
Release: 2002
Copyright: 1968
DVD Sale: $29.98

This DVD is sold above for home video use only. If you require a license for institutional use or Public Performance rights, click here.


Subject areas:
American Studies, Civil Rights, Cultural Studies, Social Movements

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Related Titles:
Investigation of a Flame: An intimate look at the Catonsville Nine who on May 17, 1968 walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and incinerated them with homemade napalm.

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