cinema

television was proving to be a major blow to cinema attendance in the early 1960s, although cinemas regained some strength in the following years.

Cinema in the 1960s reflected the youth-driven culture of the time, catering less to the taste of families and more to the teenage ‘baby boomer’ crowd. withMovies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Easy Rider (1969) reflected the fashion, music and changing social values of the decade.

               

 

other important films coming out in this decade include;

   mary poppins

how to kill a mocking bird

psycho

goldfinger

the sound of music

bonnie and clyde

dr strangelove

breakfast at tiffanys

some directors that should get a mention are ;

Stanley kubrick , who produced a number of films in the 60s dr strange love a dark comedy based around the cold war and nuclear hollocaust, another being spartacus  based around a gladiator in the roman empire, he went on to direct some classic films still in circulation today eg: full metal jacket , the shining , clockwork orange.

Another well known director making his mark in this period was the master of suspense alfred hitch cock who produced 5 movies in the 60s.

in 1960 with psycho

1963 the birds

1964 marnie

1966 torn curtain

1969 topaz

Notible actors to come out of this decade included;

gregory peck                   audrey hepburn                john wayne                               clint eastwood

 

steve mc queen                                           burt renolds                                  peter fonda

 

 

 

 

music

Music has and still is being ,consistently influenced by the trends of the time; being a reflectin of the , politics, economics,and social conditions of that time.

The children of the 60s or baby boomer generation as they were known lived during a time when Demonstrations, organizations, speeches, freedom chants, and drugs were rife .

In the early 1960s a band called the Byrds and guys like bob Dylan were changing  the way many people looked at music. Kick starting an underground wave that flowed throughout the 60s, that came to be known as the Psychedelic Era. It was in this era that drugs began to be seen as an important aspect in the creation of the music and also by the listeners to enhance their experience. Bands such as the Byrds and Grateful Dead started experimenting with such drugs as LSD, and maurijana. Believing  drugs could help create music that would blow the music of the 50s away.

 

Drugs began to change the music scene traditionaly songs lasted no longer than 4 minuites , but 20 minuite improvised sets were becoming regular.

This new music started around the San Francisco area and spread across the United States throughout the 60s. Young hipsters greeted this new music with open arms and said that drugs changed the way many experienced this new wave of music.

The other great group that used drugs for help with expression was Big Brother and the Holding Company. This band sang blues and techno color with the aid from a lady well known…Janis Joplin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTFF-BaT0MM

In January 1967, 20,000 people gathered at Golden Gate Park for a “Humanbe-ing” or “Gathering of the Tribes” which many called it. It was a large concert consisting of all the big name bands of that time and is accredited with being the stepping stone of larger festivals to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG-TD09MxRE

It also became public during this time that The Beatles had begun to do their studio work while high on LSD.

Late in the year of ’67 bands such Jefferson Airplane stepped onto the psychedelic bandwagon with songs produced with the aid of the mind altering drugs. in ’67 another big concert took place at Alexander Palace of about 10,000 people. The show lasted  14 hours and been acrredited with wild behavious throughout the whole concert such as climbing the walls and swinging from banisters. June 67, The Beatles released their first album “Seargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and this began another revolution in the music business from singles to whole albums.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIZzVV9Laqw

The “Summer of Love” came to close in August of 1969 with the great 3 day Peace and Music Festival of Woodstock. This festival was a huge success; the first of its kind to ever occur. More than 2 million people tried to get in, borders and state lines had to be closed to deal with all the people. The festival headlined a number of popular bands from across the globe and served as a place for people to commence in a demonstration for peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ4QF45Vygw 

 

The last concert of the sixties, , was Altama. This show was intended to be a small gathering until The Rolling Stones announced that they were giving this concert at no charge to the public More than 500,000 people came to a old run down race track to hear the famous Stones. This show was one that many of the bands who played will never forget.

don mc cullin

Don mc cullin was born in 1935 in the poor Finsbury Park suburb of north  London  , mc cullin was exposed to the horrors of war from an early age bearing witness to hitlers blitz of London during the second world war . after his father death he was forced to leaving school without qualifications.

A few years later he was called up to his national service As was maditory in those days, and was posted in the RAF He served in the Egyptian canal zone, , in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, and in Aden and Cyprus.

In 1956, he returned to Finsbury Park, where he took a job as a darkroom assistant. And two years later his big break came when pictures he had taken of an Islington street gang associated with the murder of a policemen were bought by the Observer.

He quickly established himself on Fleet Street, but it was a self-funded trip to Berlin in 1960, to witness the construction of the wall, that made McCullin’s international reputation. His work there won him a British Press award, and he was soon undertaking large-scale photo essays in the UK, on such subjects as Hartlepool’s steelworkers. His work covering the civil wars in Cyprus won a World Press award, and he went on to Congo, where he was disguised as a mercenary and, most famously Vietnam, making the first of 15 visits in 1965.      

He went on to record every major conflict of his generation up to the falklands in the 80s , becoming one of the most respected war photographer and photojournalists of his decade.

after spending  so much of his time he has now has turned his attention to dark and moody landscapes around his home of summerset.

James Pollock

born and raised on a farm-ranch in South Dakota Jim Pollock has been drawing and painting from an early age , after graduation from South Dakota State University with a degree in fine art, Pollock entered the U.S. Army. Working firstly as a postal clerk for a short time on a base in south korea, change soon came when Pollock was chosen from army-wide competition for assignment to the U.S. Army’s Vietnam Combat Artist Program.

The Vietnam combat art program was run between 1966 and 1969 utilized teams of soldier artists to  record the army’s operational and mission functions by make pictorial records and interpretations for the purpose of military history. Typically, each team consisted of five soldier artists who spent 60 days of temporary duty in Vietnam traveling with various units, gathering information and making sketches of U.S. Army related activities, the  second leg of the program sent each U.S. Army Vietnam Combat Art team to Hawaii where, under less hostile conditions, they fleshed out their sketches and impressions into finished works of art.

The Combat Art Program was unique in that qualified artists were selected out of the U.S. Army’s own ranks. Prior to this program military artists, for the most part, had been seasoned, professional and civilian. Selected soldier artists were encouraged to express themselves as they saw fit and actively encouraged to use there own personal style. The resulting body of work from these forty-two artists is an uncommon and compelling look at the every-day life of army soldiers at war.

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10 Ways the 1960s Invented Today’s Fashion Trends

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1960s photography

the cultural revolution of the sixtys helped photography gain greater acceptance as an art form

This increased respect was partially attributed to artists such as

henri cartier bresson

diane arbus

david bailey

richard avedon

vietnam

Hand in hand with the cold war came a US policy developed under the president Truman  stating the U.S. would resist communist takeovers in other countries. this was  first tested in Greece and Turkey as communist insurgents (believed to be under the direction of the Soviets) tried to take over these countries.  us military aid helped repel the insurgents.

Although communist advances had previously been effectively halted by containment and the Truman Doctrine it came under test in an area of the world known as Indochina.

France had Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia) under colonial rule since  1890’s. but During WWII Indochina became part of the Japanese Empire.After WWII and japans defeat France wanted to  reimpose colonial control over Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. The Vietnamese immediately began armed resistance against the French and formed the Vietminh as the resistance party.

France struggling to control indochina was able to convince the U.S. that Vietminh resistance was fuelled  by the communist Soviets and Chinese , so America began to support the French and assist them with military aid.

Despite the American aide the French were defeated by the Vietminh in 1954 and lost control over Vietnam. a conference in Geneva, determined Vietnam was to be divided into two parts, a communist north and a non-communist south and It was agreed  that reunification elections for Vietnam were to be held in 1956. But both  the U.S. and South Vietnam never agreed to these elections with the us believing that  truly free elections could not be held unless the United Nations was there the U.S. then took the position that Vietnam was to remain permanently divided into two countries,a communist North and non communist South. America pledged itself to the survival and military defense of South Vietnam.

 

By the 60’s the southern communist Viet Cong began a military campaign to overthrow the government of the South and By 1965 the North Vietnamese had actively joined the Viet Cong in a military attempt to take over South Vietnam. Because of the Truman doctrine US stance on the spread of communism US troops were commited to the defense of South Vietnam,.

South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty in 1961 with the United States leading to the arrival of U.S. support troops . U.S. military aid to South Vietnam increased, especially after the U.S. Senate passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution in 1964 at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson.which was a supposed attack on us ships by hostile forces that resulted in the us sending fully fledged combat troops to Vietnam and large scale bombing of military targets.

by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam. meanwhile North Vietnam, was receiving assistance and funding from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries.

Despite massive U.S. military aid, heavy bombing, the growing U.S. troop commitment ( reaching  550,000 in 1969), and some political stability in South Vietnam , the United States and South Vietnam were unable to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Optimistic U.S. military reports were discredited in Feb., 1968, by the costly and devastating Tet offensive of the North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, involving attacks on more than 100 towns and cities and a month-long battle for Hue in South Vietnam.

the war finally ended in April 1975 when the North Vietnamese took Saigon and the South Vietnamese government fell. The US part of the war ended with the truce in Jan. 1973.

cold war

Fears of communism had long been set into the minds of the public , with many anti communist propaganda being shown ,as early as  1919-21 and again in 1947-57  when there was a so called red scare where the publics fears of communist invaders avid on the destrcution of the free world, leading to a crack down on the so called commies and the arrest of a many a innocent civilian.

The 60s was a battle ground for the two then superpowers shows of strength against each other known as the cold war .The start of this competitions came about at the end of the WW2 when berlin was separated between the allies into a French ,English American and Russian zone ,all zones except the russians  formed together to create a single economic unit . angering the soviets, in reply to this  Stalin blocked all rail and road access to berlin,and it is this blockade that is seen as a main catalyst for the cold war, starting the competition between the two nations. to heighten tensions further the soviets built a wall around their section of Berlin to stop inhabitants of their zone defecting to the others.

after the unveiling  of the US’s atomic bomb in 1945 upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki  an arms race between the us and the soviets began with the Russians building their own bomb by 1949 .

 

Tensions between the two came to a spearhead in 1950 .when the Korean peninsula that had been separated after WW2 between a democratic  US zone in the south and a communist soviet north both separated by an invisible line known as the 38th parallel.

failure of the soviet north to hold free elections deepened the division between the two sides and in 1950 when the  communist north forces invaded the south , The UN requested that forces be sent to help the south most of which came from the us and other supporting countries.

UN forces managed to push the Communists out of South Korea and up to the Chinese border. Communist China then entered the war , helping the northern communists resist the un force, pushing them back to the 38th parallel where the war had begun, the rest of the war was fought along this line until 1954 when an armistice was signed with Russia ending the war.

 f

After death of Stalin in 1953 the cold war activities became more intense with the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. supporting opposite sides in different regions such as Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.

as with the arms  race between the two superpowers the sparked a space race between the two in by launching the first satellite by the name of sputnik in 1957 . and the soviets having the upper hand for a while fo example in 1961 the soviets had launched the 1wst man into space this race was effectively won though by the us who put 1^st man on the moon in1969 .

 

fashion

The 1960s was one of the most revolutionary and influential decades in world history. Styles, dance fads, music, fashion and political unrest defined the decade, as a time of revolution and change. spearheaded by The teenagers of the baby boom making themselves heard and actively rebelling against government viewpoints and the styles of their parents’ generation.

With the vast teenage population as a result of the baby boom any activity or product catering to the teenage market boomed with many of the activity’s or toys you see today coming out of this period for example skateboarding , and iconic toys such as Barbie and troll dolls , hot wheels and lego.

 

The 1960s was a decade of change in regards to fashion and in this time period ideas were generated and images used which still appear modern today. Before the 60s fashion had been predominantly aimed at a wealthy, mature elite, but it was now the young people that became important.

In the beginning of the decade, fashions were conservative and mimicked those of the ’50s. with popular styles at the time being the beehive hairstyle ,the  bouffant where a dress was tight at the top and the skirt puffs out. beatnik style was aslo popular where the men whore  black berets, black pants and dark glasses.

 

In the middle of the decade,It began emerging, that musical taste and styles of dress were closely linked for example in England a subculture called the mod look came into fashion that went hand in hand with  pop music, Jamaican ska, and British beat music, whos followers were kitted out in tailored suits , fred perry tops , parkas and italian scooter.

 

Where as their opposite numbers in the scene were the rockers who preferred rock and roll to pop , riding on powerful motor bikes racing from cafe to cafe.

towards the end ’60s, the beginnings of hippie fashion were making an appearance. with Love beads, long, loose hair and jeans ruled casual day wear for both men and women ,driven forward by one of the most important subcultures of the decade , the hippies who were born out of the counterculture values of the beat necks that preceded them were unleashed into the perfect enviroment to try make change in a fast changing and deloping society, fueled by the production of birth-control pills, a counterproductive war in Vietnam, the liberation and idealism of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, FM radio, mass-produced LSD,

shaping of the 60s

After years of rationing and shortages brought about by the second world war. The 1950s  brought about change and were a time of great economic, prosperity, high employment and technological development playing a fundamental role in shaping life and major events in the sixty’s.

The end of the second world war in 1945 produced a dramatic spike in birth rates as many of the returning service men settled down got married and had families, with the spike lasting for a period of 8 years an estimated 79 million babies were born, most of which would hit  their teens or early twenty’s in the sixty’s, this ment that society found itself catering to a generation of young people in a way that had never occurred before.  these youth would  become the driving force behind this decade of change.