About Us

Director Daniel Miller’s Statement

I was a student at Kent State University from 1968 to 1970. I grew up there and then. I celebrated and suffered the events of the 1960s and 70s with my friends and colleagues who are featured in this film. Together with the wonderful young people of the present generation, to whom we owe so much, we have made a film that tells the personal stories of those who grew up in that era.

I can’t adequately explain what it was like to live through it.  How does one explain an era when music, art, literature, and politics were transformative and at times, yes, revolutionary; when fathers were too often silent and angry; when mothers and wives were too often oppressed; when brothers and friends were fighting, killing, and dying in ways that were violent beyond any rational extreme; when kids drilled for nuclear war; when gays were cast as monsters; when the crudest most racist “N” word jokes were common; when young blacks were beaten and murdered for being black and young whites were threatened for wearing long hair or short dresses, or listening to the wrong (black rock and roll) kind of music; where at the same time that very music made its way to transistor radios, TVs, juke boxes and school dances; where Allen Ginsberg was reciting “Howl,” Jackson Pollock was challenging artistic convention, Chuck Berry was creating rock and roll, the Beatles were celebrating youth, the Stones were assaulting young audiences with grinding blues, and Bob Dylan was speaking to everyone in a poetic “people” language that proclaimed that Emmet Till deserved dignity, masters of war were criminals and the times they were a changing. How could I or anyone else tell you what it was like to suffer the existentialist nightmarish body blows of the murders of those we believed in our hearts were the ones who could lead us towards the deliverance of our society and the realization of the just democracy that so many of our parents had seemed to abandon all hope of? The deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy caused us to instantaneously double over and cry in our hearts. The memories still do today. It is as if the world and the very fabric of the known universe were torn asunder. And then came the election of Richard M. Nixon, born of the American nightmare, who conducted Christmas Bombings, controverted the very constitution with impunity for years, fomented secret wars and murders in Chile, stirred up anti-communist hysterias, tolerated torture, unleashed the dogs of war, and did anything he could to control the unruly young and protect the status quo.

And yet, through all of this, we experienced the thrill of being part of a community of our own making, one of challenging art, music, literature, and protest that celebrated life and sought to change the world. Whether or not, or just how much, in the end, we succeeded, I cannot tell you.  I can say we are a better people in many ways. We lynch fewer blacks. We share schools and drinking fountains. We strive for gay, women’s, children’s and other minority rights. We work to save the environment. We reach out and do small but great things in the world. But real change, I wonder. We did not end poverty, political corruption, executive deceit, political corruption, military-industrial complex ascension, or the execution of international policies of militarism and war.  We have engaged in torture. We allow families to go hungry and without health care. We condone profit from pollution.

We allow for-profit entertainment media conglomerates and technologies to dominate our views and lives. Institutional and political racism thrives. And we do not stand up enough to these injustices.

I hope this film tells a story that enlightens people just a little bit about the days of the sixties that are hidden or not well known, that were real and not perfect, but that in the end, were celebratory and risky and maybe even, a little bit righteous in doing so.