Earlier this year Fabiano asked Marshall and I to think about how we might relate to this 30th anniversary of '68. After attending several'68 panels at the New School and at Columbia, we realized that we had a problem with just dragging out the old films and the old timers to share their old anti-war stories. Here's one aspect of this problem . On May Day this year at the 30th anniversary of the Columbia University strike, veterans of the '68 strike started out their weekend of panels and celebrations by showing Newsreels' COLUMBIA STUDENT REVOLT . I was the only Newsreeler I saw in the hall and there clearly was no space to talk about radical films. When the film was over we all cheered and then the vet's talked about themselves, then and now. It was moving, these are people that have kept up the "good fight". But finally I thought the absence of today's student and film activists relegated the film and the Revolt to nostalgia . Marshall and I agreed that we wanted to find a way to relate then and now. A FILMMAKERS DIALOGUE ON '68 -'98 is the result. There is another thread to mention. For the past year or so Roz, John and I have been imagining some kind of an expanded Newsreel documentary project. For years Roz has been archiving and showing Newsreel films, as relevant history, not as nostalgia. In fact she and John are working with Ken Peck planning a '68 /Newsreel side bar this years VT. Festival. John has also created one of the more attractive and dynamic web sites called ArtVT. It already includes a Newsreel page. John is prepared to help build a '68-'98 web page and interactive presence for this project-- A FILMMAKERS DIALOGUE ON '68 -'98.. In addition you all know of many other '68 related events; seminars, panels, film showings and web sights. For instance Ken Loach , Bertrand Taverner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez are part of the Festival Resistances 1998 this July in France. And at this years Human Rights Watch film Festival Bruni has programmed Charles Hobson's INSIDE BEDFORD STUYVESANT " the first Africa-American television series". She very much wants to open up a dialogue between '68 and '98 filmmakers, especially on human rights questions. So can we connect all these and other threads and relate them to filmmakers today? How do we get started? I propose that we compose a letter something like that which follows. That we each encourage others to join us in making this invitation public and distributing it widely--to the media and to film schools, festivals, etc. Of course we need more diversity than just us before we go public. Who would you invite to join in our first call? Film people from '68, perhaps from other countries? How about younger filmmakers people from around the world? Who comes to mind? I imagine that when the letter is ready to go out the web site will be in place featuring lots of information, links to other sites and announcements for screenings and seminars such as at the Anthology in NYC and at the festival in Vt.