The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco is showing the films of Peter Whitehead starting this week. He was a British director who made many films of the swinging London scene in the mid 60s. Here are the film times and descriptions from the YBCA web site:

POP FILMS
(1966-69)
Thu & Fri, Sep 14 & 15, 7:30 pm

Whitehead’s early short films represent the inception of the artful, experimental and daring “rock video.” This program includes the films he made with the Jimi hendrix Experience, Animals, Nico, Shadows, Small Faces and many more.

TONIGHT LET’S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON
(1967, 70 min)
Thu, Sep 21, 7:30 pm

One of the few filmmakers trusted within the perfumed gardens of Britain’s music and art scene in the 60s, whitehead was allowed unparalleled access into the center of the pop circle to capture the moment for this kaleidoscopic film. With contributions from the likes of Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Lee Marvin and David Hockney, Tonight presents a dazzling record of the in-crowd. Preceded by Wholly Communion (1964, 33 min), the film that launched Whitehead’s career. Wholly Communion captures the historic event at the Royal Albert hall where an audience of 7,000 witnessed the first meeting of American and British Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso.

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
(1965, 65 min)
Wed, Sep 27, 7:30 pm

Peter Brook directs the Royal Shakespeare Company in US, a semi-improvised work protesting England’s unseen and unacknowledged role in the Vietnam War. Containing sequences at public meetings and interviews with the actors (including Glenda Jackson) and Brook himself, the film is an agit-prop time capsule that has gone virtually unseen in this country since its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1967.

THE FALL
(1969, 120 min)
Thu, Sep 28, 7:30 pm

Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film, The fall is a personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence in late 60s America. Filmed entirely in and around New York between October 1967 and June 1968, it features Robert kennedy, the Bread and Puppet Theater, Paul Auster (fresh-faced as a Columbia student), Tom hayden, Mark Rudd, Stokely Carmichael, h. Rap Brown, Arthur Miller, Robert Lowell and Robert Rauschenberg.