1968: a new wave of filmmaking

The spirit of 1968 was presaged by filmmakers in the preceding years, especially in France. The "Nouvelle Vague," or New Wave, was the most vital of the many new developments in cinema at the time. Directors rejected everything that smacked of turgid post-war film aesthetics. Jean Luc Godard's 1959 film "Breathless" was a fresh cinematic wind that triggered the New Wave revolution.

Francois Truffaut was another influential French New Wave director whose films were even more popular than Godard's. Truffaut's breakout 1961 film, "Jules and Jim," questioned the nature of monogamous love and hinted at the sexual revolution and new ideas about female gender roles that have since become emblematic of 1968.

Germany experienced its own take on New Wave cinema in the 1960s, as the foundations were set for the New German Cinema. The Oberhausen Manifesto signed by 26 filmmakers in 1962 demanded a shift away from "Papa's cinema," and director Alexander Kluge became the leader of the new genre with his 1966 drama "Yesterday Girl," the story of a young East German migrant in West Germany.

German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's vast filmography of sometimes abstract and always uncompromising cinema sparked international recognition for Germany's nascent New Wave. His first feature film was the 1969 gangster film, "Love is colder than death." Fassbinder cared little for convention and was a true revolutionary in terms of aesthetics and plot who made films with tireless zeal.

For a while, it seemed Communist East Germany was also in the grips of a cinematic revolution in the mid-1960s. East German film makers made a dozen movies in 1965-66 that moved down new cinematic paths, including Frank Beyer's "Spur der Steine" ("Trace of Stones"), the story of exploited petrochemical plant workers that typically played for a few days before it was banned by the GDR government.

Eastern European directors also tried to disrupt established cinematic conventions in the 1960s, especially in Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to the Prague Spring. Avant-garde filmmaker Vera Chytilova was synonymous with the Czech New Wave that included work by Jiri Menzel and Milos Forman, who, before "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," was Oscar nominated for 1965's "Loves of a blonde" (pictured).

Brazilian filmmakers also played a special role in Latin American popular movements by creating what became known as "Cinema Novo," or new film. Director Glauber Rocha was a key figure in a new film culture that took its queues from Italian neorealism and French New Wave. His 1969 western "Anotiono das Mortes" (1969), for example, took a critical look at the plight of Brazilian peasants.

Japanese cinema also saw revolutionary developments in the 1960s. Nagisa Oshima, who would shock world cinema in the 1970s with his art "In the Real of the Senses," had already embarked on radical projects defied cinematic conventions. His 1967 film "Sing a song of sex," for example, examines young people's changing attitude toward violence and sexuality.

Of course, the movement didn't bypass the US. A new vanguard of directors grouped together under the New Hollywood cinema broke away from the mainstream studio conventions to create daring films that reflected the political insurgency of the time. The 1968 road movie "Easy Rider," starring Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, was the ultimate counterculture film of the New Hollywood era.

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" seems to mark the end of the global new cinema phenomenon that coincided with 1968. The film – made in the US – is a homage to the aftermath of the late '60s protest and flower power movement. The final scene shows a villa exploding in a huge fireball, symbolic of a loss of innocence after years of idealism.