The National Guard shows up: U.S. National Guard Birthday, USA.

A European camera crew follows a diverse group of American minor dissidents – pacifists, feminists, communists – who are given the choice to spend decades in federal prison, or three days in Bear Mountain Punishment Park, chased by National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers. If they manage to capture the American flag, they're free to go.

“America is as psychotic as it is powerful and violence is the only goddamn thing that will command your attention.”

– Defendant Lee Robert Brown

While the washed-out 16mm footage and references to #Nixon may tell you otherwise, Punishment Park remains a gut-punching portrait of a timeless America.

“Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich. Some of us are poor, with information. All of us can be rich. Our job, your job, is to rob the bank. To kill the guard. To go out there to destroy everybody who keeps, and hides, the whole information. Simple. Special. Information. Power.”

– The High Priest

A disaster has struck the future world. A private one, Karen's sister has had an accident. And a global one, one so severe that a Government project is put in place. The Project, located in the #Idaho desert and in different points in time, transfers teenagers 56 years forward so to repopulate the to-be-wiped-out land. Then, without warning or reason, The Project shuts down and the kids strand into a deserted future.

“Esto Perpetua”

– Idaho state motto

Idaho Transfer is, even for early 70s standards, an odd affair. It carries the weight of its time – hippie optimism had died thanks to #Manson, US meddling in Vietnam, the impending #EcoCrisis (we knew, we always did…) – but there too was this optimism for the upcoming millennium. Everything was going to be fine, in The Future. We'll be wiser, no more wars, no more famine, technology will save us. Released just 4 months before the first Oil Shock, Fonda somehow transferred a glimpse of our future.

In a #plague-ridden Taiwan, it rains relentlessly. The #rain and a #virus forces people to retreat. In Hsiao Kang's crumbling building, a plumber inadvertently punches a hole from his floor to the unnamed woman's below. While she, another victim of the #disease, holes up in her apartment they struck up a strange detached relationship.

 

Between the endless downpour and frantic #food hoarding, in her heart a #musical sings.

“On old long syne my Jo, On old long syne, That thou canst never once reflect, On old long syne”

– Robert Burns, Auld Lang Syne (1788)