Berkshires at the Counterculture

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Berkshires at the Counterculture

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A celebration of far out filmmaking shot right here in the Berkshires.

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For a brief moment, the Berkshires got weird.

This April, The Triplex is celebrating a collection of films shot in Great Barrington and surrounding Berkshire towns in the 60’s and 70’s that are reminders of just how out there our little community can be.

Alice’s Restaurant, 1969. Photo courtesy of United Artists.

We kick off our series on April 18th with Max Kalmanowicz’s The Children, a cult classic horror movie about a group of children who terrorize their small town after being transformed into radioactive zombies. On April 25th, we screen Aram Avarkian’s End of the Road, the story of Jacob (Stacy Keach), a man turned catatonic by the state of the world who is taken in by a highly unconventional doctor (James Earl Jones). And on April 27th, Arlo Guthrie and Matt Penn join us for a screening of Alice’s Restaurant, Arthur Penn’s cinematic adaptation of Guthrie’s classic antiwar ballad.

These are three very different movies, but if there’s one thing that connects them, it’s the influence of the Vietnam War. These are stories of people trying to find peace in a violent, unsettled world. Arlo comes to Housatonic in Alice’s Restaurant to be a part of a movement that can make the world a more loving place. Jacob comes to the country to regain his sanity in End of the Road. And the protagonists of The Children take up arms to protect their small town as an insidious violence creeps in.

The Children, 1980. Photo courtesy of Troma Pictures.

Ultimately, tragically, the legacy of these movies might be their depiction of ideals being torn apart by human frailty. Each one tells a story of how hard it is to hold together these peaceful communities, even in a place as beautiful as the Berkshires. We’ll be discussing that legacy in talkbacks following each of the screenings, and after our short film program Counterculture Now, a collection of short films from local filmmakers that carry on the tradition of the counterculture movement, on April 28th.

We hope you’ll join us for one (or all!) of these movies to not only get a glimpse of what our area looked like back in the day, but to discuss the ways we’re still struggling to sustain a community of peace, love, and understanding 50 years later.

Showtimes

Showtimes Minecraft | 1:30PM, 4:30PM, 7:30PM Ballad of Wallis Island | 1:45PM The Accountant 2 | 2:00PM, 5:00PM, 8:00PM Misericordia | 4:45PM, 7:45PM

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