Classic films of the 1960s

Permissive times made for propulsive cinema.

8½

Fellini triumphantly conjured himself out of writer's block with this magnum opus about a film director experiencing his own creative crisis.

Drama
1963
138 mins
Federico Fellini

Theorem

Pasolini’s classic about a handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) who arrives at a bourgeois household and seduces an entire family.

Drama
1968
98 mins
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnes Varda’s classic character study follows a pop singer as she wanders around Paris awaiting the results of serious medical tests.

Drama
1962
91 mins
Agnès Varda

Kwaidan

This stunningly beautiful anthology of Japanese ghost stories is one of the most meticulously crafted supernatural films ever made.

Horror
Anthology
1964
183 mins
Masaki Kobayashi

Jules et Jim

François Truffaut’s hugely popular classic depicts one of cinema’s most captivating love triangles

Drama
1962
106 mins
François Truffaut

More

The first feature by Barbet Schroeder (Maîtresse, The Valley), More created a sensation when it was released in 1969, quickly becoming a cult classic and famed for its Pink Floyd soundtrack.

Drama
1969
116 mins
Barbet Schroeder

Woman of the Dunes

Hiroshi Teshigahara's mystifying, serene and provocative fable about an entomologist who becomes trapped in a young widow’s desert shack.

Animation & Artists Moving Image
1964
147 mins
Hiroshi Teshigahara

Bushman

Neglected since its release in 1971, Bushman follows a Nigerian student in San Francisco but is interrupted by the arrest of its leading man.

Documentary
1971
75 mins
David Schickele

Saute ma ville

Chantal Akerman’s plays a manic heroine in her early, incendiary critique of domesticity and conformity.

Drama
1968
13 mins
Chantal Akerman

Coming soon

La notte

Michelangelo Antonioni's masterpiece about urban alienation stars Italian film icons Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti.

Drama
1961
123 mins
Michelangelo Antonioni

BFI Restoration

Strongroom

A bank robbery turns into a race against time to save two innocent people trapped in an airtight vault in this Tarantino-championed British thriller.

Crime
1962
79 mins
Vernon Sewell

Yojimbo

Kurosawa’s classic about a drifting samurai who plays two gangs off against each other, famously remade as A Fistful of Dollars.

Crime
Martial arts
1961
111 mins
Akira Kurosawa

Lord of the Flies

Peter Brook’s Palme d’Or-nominated adaption of the classic novel by William Golding.

Drama
Science Fiction
1963
91 mins
Peter Brook

Macunaíma

An anarchic 60s comedy that mixes ancient myths, racial burlesque, and urban guerillas into a hallucinatory experience.

Comedy
Fantasy
1969
104 mins
Joaquim Pedro de Andrade

Bande à part

Godard's playful tribute to the Hollywood pulp crime movies of the 1940s, executed with typically Gallic cool.

Crime
1964
95 mins
Jean-Luc Godard

Rocco and His Brothers

Italian maestro Luchino Visconti’s epic drama follows a mother and her five sons who move from a small town to Milan, changing their lives forever.

Drama
1960
179 mins
Luchino Visconti

Black God, White Devil

Wanted for murder, Manuel and his wife are on the run in Glauber Rocha's masterpiece and banner film of Brazil's Cinema Novo movement.

Drama
Crime
1964
119 mins
Glauber Rocha

Through a Glass Darkly

The first part of Ingmar Bergman's 'Faith Trilogy', about a writer (Björnstrand) who joins his daughter, son and son-in-law on holiday, where tensions soon arise.

Drama
1961
89 mins
Ingmar Bergman

The Exterminating Angel

Buñuel’s surreal, darkly satirical masterpiece about a group of wealthy dinner guests finding themselves inexplicably unable to leave.

Drama
1962
93 mins
Luis Buñuel

Trans-Europ-Express

This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.

Thriller
1966
95 mins
Alain Robbe-Grillet