Sunday (Daniel Drasin, 1961)

Dan Drasin’s documentary short, shot in a single afternoon in 1961, is often cited as the first major social protest film of the Sixties. When 19-year-old Drasin and his friends joined folk singers and protesters in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park, they confronted NYC authorities to protest the cancellation of a standing permit to gather and sing in the park on Sundays. Here are the first signs of the political, racial and cultural issues that would soon erupt during the decade.