1960

Trust the Italians to make such a wonderful nostalgic piece out of such a novel imaginative idea! Uses a trivial storyline (a young boy's relationship to his much older brother who has left their southern Italian village to find fame and fortune in the north of Italy) as a pretext to surreally stitch together 75 minutes of random, totally unrelated newsreels all shot in Italy in 1960. Difficult to believe how many historic events happened in one year - the making of Fellini's La Dolce Vita, the shooting down of the U2 plane as it spied on the Soviet Union, the Rome Olympics, the election of JFK, etc.

Watch it if only for the unrepeatable stylishness of a sunglasses-wearing Livio Berruti in B/W winning the 200m sprint final at the Rome Olympics, one of the defining mythical images of early post-war Italy (film buffs, read "A Roman Holiday", "La Dolce Vita", "8 1/2", "Umberto D", etc).

And don't be put off by not knowing Italian, if it doesn't have subtitles. It's the images that are mesmerizing, not the rather droll plot line or lightweight newsreel commentary.