Sixties march again
The 1960s marked what was arguably one of last century's greatest periods of upheaval. The Cold War was at its height, a war was being fought in Vietnam and the decade saw the birth of the civil rights, environmental, feminist and gay rights movements.
American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and it was last year's 50th anniversary of this event that led to the making of SBS1's new series, The Sixties.
Actor Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, his partner in the film and television production company Playtone, along with fellow documentary producer Mark Herzog, were meeting CNN, which was looking for a JFK special.
"We were throwing out ideas and mentioned that Tom had had an idea about doing a documentary about the Warren Commission report on the assassination," Herzog said.
"I had done a lot of research for that and had read the report. CNN came back to us and said yes, but how about doing a bigger series about the 1960s."
The 10-part series takes in the fears of the time but also some of the joys - the invasion of British music and fashion, the walk on the Moon and the birth of flower power and the hippie movement.
Herzog (Killing Lincoln) was joint executive producer of the series with Hanks and Goetzman but he stepped into the edit suite and took charge of the news footage and interviews for two episodes: this Sunday's The Assassination of JFK and the coming A Long March to Freedom, about the civil rights movement.
The JFK episode, shown in the US on the anniversary of the assassination, was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding documentary or non-fiction special.
Herzog believes the Warren Commission's finding was correct: Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy and he did it alone. But he does not expect to change the opinion of those who claim there was a wider conspiracy to kill the then president.
"The real question is why do people not believe the commission and why do they continue to search for other answers," Herzog asked. "The episode that we made presents all the facts but at the same time juxtaposes them with voices from the 1960s from the conspiracy community and we have found that after people have watched it they take away what they want to take away.
"Some people have said that it took away all the hope that they had that there was some sort of plan, that there was a reason why somebody like Kennedy was assassinated. Other people, there is no way I can change their mind."
Herzog was born in 1962 and has happy memories of sorting through his sister's green box of 45rpm records and listening to Gerry and the Pacemakers and Herman's Hermits, but he also became aware then of the civil rights movement. He is proud that he was able to interview so many of the people who fought for civil rights, particularly those from the 1960 Nashville Movement, whose members staged sit-ins at lunch counters in the city, protesting at the refusal to serve black people.
"A very small group was at so many seminal events and their impact changed legislation in this country," he said. "I loved being able to tell their story."
