History of Film: 1960-1978

1. History of Film From 1830 to Today

2. 1960 • The first televised U.S. presidential debates, between Nixon and JFK. • Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is released. • Dalton Trumbo receives screen credit for writing the script to Otto Preminger’s Exodus, signaling the end of the HUAC blacklist. • Federico Fellini directs his epic film about modern decadence in Rome, La Dolce vita. • Roger Corman directs the original Little Shop of Horrors, features a young Jack Nicholson.

3. Movies from 1960

4. 1961* • First U.S. troops are sent to Vietnam. • The Soviets launch the first man into space. • The Berlin Wall goes up.

5. 1962 • Marilynn Monroe Dies • Andy Warhol exhibits his first Campbell’s soup can paintings. • Telstar, the first communications satellite in orbit, is launched, relaying television pictures from the U.S. to France and England. • Dr. No is the first James Bond movie. • More than 700 foreign films are released in U.S. theatres.

6. Movie from 1962

7. 1963 • Federal legislation mandates equal pay for women. • President JFK is assassinated; VP Lyndon Johnson is sworn in. • Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique. • Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. • Shirley Clarke directs her drama of African American life, The Cool World, in Harlem.

8. Movies from 1963

9. 1964 • Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa. • The Beatles come to the U.S. • Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Prize. • Sidney Poitier becomes the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. • Stanley Kubrick’s nightmare comedy, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

10. Movies from 1964

11. 1965* • The first space walk, on the Gemini 4 mission. • The New York City blackout. • The U.S. sends 3,500 troops to Vietnam. • Malcom X is assassinated in NY.

12. Sound of Music 1965Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer

13. 1966 • “Star Trek” television series premieres. • The Motion Picture Production Code considerably relaxes as the result of such films as Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? • OusmaneSemene directs Black Girl, the first indigenous African feature film.

14. Movies from 1966

15. 1967 • The U.S. and U.S.S.R sign a space demilitarization treaty. • The Six Day War in the Middle East. • Sony introduces a low-cost black-and-white home video recorder, The PortaPak. • Jean-Luc Godard releases his apocalyptic vision of modern society in collapse, Weekend.

16. Movies from 1967

17. 1968 • The death of the pioneering woman film director, Alice Guy, goes unnoticed by the general press. • MLK Jr. and RFK are assassinated roughly a month apart. • The Motion Picture Association of America develops a new rating system.

18. Movies from 1968

19. 1969 • Charles Manson is arrested for the murder of actress Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, and four others in LA. • The concert at Woodstock draws 400,000 people for three days of music. • Neil Armstrong becomes the first man on the moon. • Sony introduces the videocassette recorder for home use. • Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch brings a new level of violence to the screen.

20. Movies from 1969

21. 1970 • Computer floppy discs are introduced. • Singer Janis Joplin and rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix die. • Earth Day is observed for the first time. • The Beatles break up. • Four students protesting the Vietnam War are killed by National Guard troops at Kent State.

22. Movies from1970

23. 1971 • “All in the Family” debuts on television. • Video cassette recorders are introduced. • Computer Space is the first video arcade game.

24. 1972 • Ms. magazine debuts. • Magnavox introduces Odyssey, the first home video game system; Atari is founded.

25. 1973 • Skylab is launched. • Sears Towers, the tallest building in the world, is built in Chicago. • George Lucas directs American Graffiti.

26. 1974* • Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defects from the U.S.S.R. • President Nixon resigns due to the Watergate scandal. • Patty Hearst is kidnapped. • Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is released.

27. 1975 • Jaws premieres and becomes the model for the modern movie blockbuster. • Robert Altman directs the quirky, multi-character film Nashville. • Sony introduces Betamax video recorders for home use.

28. 1976 • VHS home video recording is introduced; it will soon eclipse the Betamax format. • Director BendardoBertolucci’s1900, a tale of political turmoil, is released.

29. 1977* • The mini-series “Roots” airs on tv. • George Lucas’s Star Wars is released. • John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever is a huge hit, signaling the dominance of disco music. • Steven Spielberg releases Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

30. 1978 • “Mork and Mindy” debuts on tv, making an instant star of Robin Williams. • Jim Jones and more than 900 followers commit mass suicide at “Jonestown” in Guyana. • John Carpenter’s Halloween starts a horror movie franchise.

31. Movies from 1978

32. 1979 • Sony introduced the Walkman. • Ayatollah Khomeini becomes leader of Iran; revolutionaries take American hostages in Tehran. • Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Prize. • The China Syndrome, about the dangers of nuclear reactors, opens just before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania. • The Australian cinema comes roaring back to prominence with Mad Max, starring Mel Gibson.

33. Movies from 1979