For a brief moment after his first English-language effort Blow-Up became a surprise hit, Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni was actually considered a bankable property in Hollywood. It was during this time that the director encountered a news report of a young man in Arizona who went for a joy ride in a small plane only to be shot to death when he returned it. From this foundation, Antonioni would construct Zabriskie Point, an unruly mosaic surveying the clash between all-American consumerism and an ascendent youth culture bent on revolution. Ostensibly anchored by the budding desert romance between fugitive plane thief Mark and alienated office temp Daria (played by nonactors Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin), Zabriskie Point spends roughly equal amounts of time delineating its plot, basking in the natural splendor of its titular locale, and creeping through the blighted sprawl of suburban Los Angeles, spreading further and further like a rash. Confident they had another Easy Rider on their hands, MGM budgeted Zabriskie Point at a lavish $7 million, a decision that appeared to be the height of folly once it premiered to savage reviews and dismal returns. Before the film even left theaters, though, its cult reclamation had begun, bewitching a portion of the very youth audience it was produced for with its oddball narrative and beautifully alien CinemaScope imagery. Some five decades on, Zabriskie Point has aged far better than most contemporaneous studio efforts, a work of genuine big screen spectacle made special for the anti-capitalists. With music by Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, John Fahey, and an absolute scorcher of a title theme sung by Roy Orbison. 35mm Print from Park Circus

Preceded by: God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance (Les Blank, 1968) – 20 min – 16mm from Canyon Cinema