Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

For those of us who grew up in the sixties, Bob Dylan often captured the essence of what we felt in his cryptic lyrics, and there was a sense that we were going through revolutionary times—a unique period where we could change the world and make it a better place. Many sensed that these changes could never come from the old institutions, but would require a radical change that was completely outside of the establishment.

In retrospect, these ideas may seem naive, yet the sixties did effect a great deal of change. It was impossible to put the period in perspective when going through campus demonstrations, campaigning for Civil Rights, or trying to stop the war in Vietnam—or, more likely, trying to find ways to avoid getting sent off to the war. But the 1990 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties reaches far beyond the usual nostalgic trip back into the sixties by offering tremendous insights into the period.

Mark Kitchell's documentary represents oral history at its finest—not history recalled by mainstream leaders of the time like Ronald Reagan or J. Edgar Hoover, but by the student leaders, activists, and followers at the grassroots level who passed through the vortex of the 1960s on the Berkeley campus. Even though the main viewpoint comes from a decidedly liberal-leftist perspective, the film remains remarkably straightforward as it chronicles the turbulent events that caused the world to look towards Berkeley for direction.

Kitchell's documentary may focus on the Berkeley campus, but the subject matter actually covers the entire decade and represents the best perspective on the era that has ever been filmed. For most who think back on the sixties, the decade represents the struggles for Civil Rights, the Anti-War Movement, and the beginnings of the Women's Liberation Movement and Ecology Movement.

The documentary makes a strong case that the seeds of all these movements began in 1960 with a handful of University of California students who stood up against the House on un-American Activities. It's very chilling to see images of these students "going limp" as the police drag them to the paddy wagons and then see the authorities turn on the fire hoses to clear the area of demonstrators—clearly foreshadowing the more commonly seen pictures surrounding the 1963 Civil Rights battles in Birmingham, the 1968 police riots in Chicago, and numerous confrontations on college campuses in the late 1960s.

Combining archive footage and interviews with now middle-aged activist participants, Kitchell traces the student movement throughout the sixties. Beginning with the 1960 protests against the HUA documentary "Operation Abolition" that labeled student demonstrators as Communists through the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of 1964 that united student groups (as divergent as the Students for Goldwater and the Young Socialists) to the Anti-War and People's Park protests of the late sixties, the film shows how confrontational politics worked.

Kitchell uncovers some history that had been hidden previously through the interviews. Especially illuminating are conversations with Bobby Seale and another member of the Black Panther Party that got its start in Oakland and gained international prominence due to the media coverage of the various Berkeley happenings. Painted as a militant group—as Seale describes their public persona as "niggers with guns"—the organization was actually far less than envisioned. The members now chuckle at their past fame, telling that they funded themselves by going to Chinatown to purchase the Red Book for about 20 cents and sold them on the Berkeley campus for a dollar apiece to students who wanted to support the radical black group. Seale laughingly reveals that he and his Black Panther mates hadn't even read Chairman Mao's book!

But that humorous undertone is often lost in many takes on the sixties from people who really weren't close to any of the Movement. Seeing Ronald Reagan gain fame as the California governor who stood up against the student "rabble" at Berkeley reminds us how seriously most Americans viewed the Movement, and saw it as a threat to its basic societal foundations. In those days a "straight" person was identified by his political ideology and cultural lifestyle instead of sexual orientation, and non-materialists who simply wanted to "Be" knew that the real struggle was to create a new way of life. So something was happening, but Reagan and the other straights didn't know what it was—they only saw the surface signs and were appalled by the long hair, drugs, music, sexual openness, and non conformist attitudes.

If you want a mainstream interpretation of the sixties, go elsewhere. Berkeley in the Sixties tells the stories on behalf of the student activists, but doesn't sugar coat it. The participants look back at the events critically and tell of their disappointments and mistakes—chief among them occurring near the end of the decade when the movement became more unfocused during the advent of the counter-culture. They also do a very credible job exploring how the political radicals and the hippies had similar goals but different attitudes and means of getting there, coming together occasionally on projects like the People's Park and a subsequent Memorial March to honor a student who was killed during a People's Park protest. Those philosophical differences have always existed though and continue on to this day.

If you wonder whatever happened to the ideals of the sixties, the documentary supplies some clues to show that these ideals never really died—just transformed as each person matured. At the end of the film the credits roll with blurbs to show what the former student activists are now doing, and you find that they are all involved in activities and professions focused on making the world a better place—a Sun Microsystems executive, the former lead guitarist for Country Joe and the Fish who became a lawyer, to a woman's rights activist, a coordinator for Greenpeace, a restaurant owner who supports peace in South American and the Palestinian cause, the author of Beyond Counter-Culture, to a half dozen teachers.

I often hear from younger generations who envy those of us who experienced the sixties live. I'm not so sure about that, remembering the conflicts we had with authority figures, the draft looming, the paranoia about being watched by the FBI, the National Guard surrounding the campus during protests, and the tear gas. It's easy to wax nostalgic when hearing the sixties music of the period that is woven into this documentary so well, or seeing images of prominent heroes of the era like Martin Luther King and Joan Baez, witnessing the stupidity of the school administration, or hearing the eloquence of Berkeley student leaders like Mario Salvio.

What elevates the Oscar nominated Berkeley in the Sixties above other documentaries about this decade is the way that Kitchell finds thoughtful representatives of the era to recount their student history while expertly varying the talking heads through camera movement and some nifty editing that mixes in some little seen archive footage for a great overview of the sixties. It'll bring back a lot of memories for those who grew up during that age while giving the events of the sixties a far more accurate perspective than you can gain from any other media source. For younger generations interested in the sixties, this documentary paints as complete a picture as possible in less than two hours. And you don't even have to smell the tear gas.