16 July, 2024
The calendar year 1974 has been justly considered one of the greatest in the history of cinema, offering masterpieces by likes of Coppola, Cassavetes, Scorsese, Altman, Rivette, Polanski, Fassbinder, Akerman, Bresson, Resnais, Peckinpah, Kiarostami, Satyajit Ray and on and on. While the same could be said about the nonfiction films of 1974, a more fascinating, more vital narrative emerges when considering this cinematic subset a half-century later. In terms of politics, power, industry, sexuality, and aesthetics, these 1974 documentaries speak so directly to present day realities that they play like early chapters to narratives we’re now living through. They’re witnesses to a destabilized moment that’s uncannily familiar to now—indeed things are either as broken as they were or more severely shattered. Films documenting a war and its aftermath in Israel-Palestine; films charting the fight for gender and sexual equality and its complications; films exemplifying uncertain conceptions of state power and the fracturing of leftist ideology; and films raising alarms about the foolishness of criminalizing addiction and institutionalizing infinite loops of incarceration. 1974: Then Is Now presents 11 extraordinary films in four thematic programs, each transporting us back 50 years to contemplate and confront what now stands right before us.
DokuFest is thrilled by the opportunity to present 1974: Then Is Now in Prizren, in a specially curated program by Eric Hynes.
Eric Hynes is Senior Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.
See the full list of the films with their descriptions in this link.
