With profound humanity and striking images Rogosin’s third film Good Times, Wonderful Times may be considered a pivotal work in his filmmaking. It is a departure from the neo realist and Flahretian influence of On The Bowery and Come Back Africa in his search for a “new form”, with the participation of avantguarde actors like Molly Parkin.

Inspired by a deep sense of the danger of nuclear annihilation and the horrors of war, Rogosin traveled the world to gather rare undiscovered footage in the early 1960s. Brilliantly contrasting these images in all their brute power with a posh dinner party in London, it is a powerful orchestration of moral issues that leaves each viewer face to face with his own responsibilities.

Finishing the film in 1964 just as the Vietnam War was in full swing, Rogosin was obliged to distribute it himself through his company Impact Films in order to get the film shown. It is estimated that a million students saw the film as it was shown around American Campuses and Rogosin was proud to say that he felt he helped to convince thousands of young men to resist the war.

This film of tremendous power inspired by Hiroshima mon amour pushes the use of historical images to the extreme creating a chain reaction resulting in an emotional explosion of horror, awareness and hope.

Michael Rogosin