You Say You Want a Revolution?

Can we revisit the ‘60s yet again, not in a futile attempt to recapture that blissful, perfect (nostalgia) trip but as an incubator for the kind of volcanic change needed at this fraught moment in the human experiment? That was the thinking behind “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970,” an idea-and-artifact packed exhibition at London’s V&A Museum of art and design in the fall-winter of 2016-2017. The veddy British curators guide us through the upheavals of the second half of the decade, from the fashion freedom of Carnaby Street to the murderous clampdown at Kent State, with a special appreciation for the Bay Area. Filmmaker Emily Harris invites idealists and futurists Stewart Brand and Lee Friedlander, and cultural avatars Peter Coyote and Country Joe McDonald, to bring their experiences to bear on the present moment. In the face of looming ecological catastrophe, they prescribe worldwide transformation - with or without LSD - to cure our conformity, consumerism, and capitulation to the status quo. (Mill Valley Film Festival)