By Ricky D’Ambrose

The interest in that cultural moment known as the Sixties is becoming increasingly visible. Across different kinds of mediums (Suze Rotolo’s “A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties”; a recent exhibition of Jill Freedman’s early photography at Higher Pictures; FilmForum’s five-week retrospective of 1960s Godard), efforts are being made to pay attention to the decade, to re-consider (or re-view) it within a different framework, within a new set of sentiments and cultural assumptions.

Lincoln Center’s current series, 1968: An International Perspective, attempts to manage an astoundingly complex decade with a selection of films motivated by the cause of “challenging the images offered by the establishment.” There is a tremendous passion to revitalize the medium with these films, and an immense offering of images and sensations curious about the cinema’s potential for being agitated, disrupted, transformed. Beginning with Godard’s La Chinoise in 1967 and ending with Paul Cronin’s 2008 A Time to Stir, the retrospective spans forty years in its selection of titles, hoping to envision “the phenomenon that was 1968” across a variety of platforms and attitudes.

The fascination regarding the Sixties – as a transformative, potentially cathartic cultural and political experience - is to be viewed here under the sign of an equally cathartic and transformative cinema. As a decade responsible for works of art that were alert to the world, that were passionate and curious about a wide range of experiences, it was also the last to be truly modern.

1968: An International Perspective is opening at the Lincoln Center Film Society April 29.