1968: The Global Revolt

Part 1 of this documentary starts with a survey of the economically booming US of the 1960s and charts the growing disenchantment of many young people who had begun to see the American government as a warmonger. The anti-war movement started at the University of Berkeley in California. As the war in Vietnam was taking on disastrous proportions, the military dictatorship in Brazil was suppressing the country’s leftist opposition. In Africa, independence movements often turned into dictatorships. In Western Europe and Japan, local student movements emerged, boycotting the traditional tools of teaching and power and seeking alternative models for society. German students rebelled against old Nazi cadres running their universities. States all around the world faced violent opposition. Widespread coverage of atrocities during the Vietnam War made the US a target of a critical left-leaning young generation that organized itself into a protest movement and swept the world up with its slogans and songs.

The second part of the documentary recounts Europe's student protests and strikes peaking as young people celebrated the "Summer of Love” while dramatic events elsewhere heralded the turning of the tide. The bloody crack-down on protests in the run-up to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City left more than 500 people dead, the escalating Vietnam War and the so-called attack on Tokyo, when students occupied the world’s largest train station, shows how the violence was spreading. The image of the Earth taken from space by "Apollo 8” in December 1968 was deceptively peaceful - the planet was really in a state of fundamental turmoil.

The third part of the documentary shows how disillusionment became widespread: The brutal war in Vietnam had made many protesters bitter, threatening the utopian dream of a different type of society. Deep rifts yawned between right and left. The opposition was becoming radicalized, leading to the rise of the "Black Panther Party" and other leftwing groups. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, symbols of hope for another America, were assassinated. At the same time, government repression in many countries such as Japan, France or Italy was growing, leading to further radicalization. Germany was rocked by terrorist attacks by the Red Army Faction, also then known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, and Italy became locked in a grim struggle between state-organized terror and the violence of the "Red Brigades," an underground communist organization.

The fourth part of our documentary follows protagonists of the '68 movement such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit as they moved into the institutions of society and the state. The fight for women's rights and LBGT equality was moving ahead strongly, while a new awareness of the need for environmental protection and criticism of the system led to the formation of non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace and Doctors Without Borders. The fall of Saigon in 1975 and the American pullout from Vietnam ended the war, which had been a key factor in the protests and revolts around the globe. The revolution may have failed, but in just a decade, the so-called generation of 68ers influenced almost every society in the world, and changed our lives in ways we still feel today.