1960s

Set in 1955 when many migrated from Russia to the Steppes of Kazakhstan, this is the trip back to the Canal from the frontier and farms by a number of people who tell their settler stories. Alyonka Muratova is a winsome 13 year old who talks Dmitry Prokovich, the chief mechanic for the Soviet, into giving up his seat in the truck to a young mother with her infant daughter. Then Alyonka and Dmitry share the back of the open truck with a young woman, newly graduated dentist who has not been able to find a position, Stefan, a hitchhiker with a dog who hopes his upper-class wife will return to him and the countryside, and Vasselina Petrovolka, a woman who lost one of her twin daughters in a riding accident by the river shortly after they arrived, and now is returning to tell the other twin of her sister's fate. A warm hearted look at common folks traveling in the frontier.

A greedy, materialistic family attempts to cover-up the embezzlement committed by the son while keeping their other schemes active. They discover there are other, equally conniving players involved.

1964 film by Shōhei Imamura

Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son's fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming.

After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear strike.

1962 film by Hiroshi Teshigahara

A dying businessman intends to will ¥200 million to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation.

A wealthy family from Calcutta is on the last day of their vacation in Darjeeling, a hill station at the foot of Mount Kanchenjungha, t he second highest peak of the Himalayas. Until now, they have been unable to catch a glimpse of the peak Kanchenjungha.The family members are dominated by the father, Indranath (Chhabi Biswas), an industrialist. He wants his daughter to marry a man of his choice and hopes that the man will propose if they are left together alone for some time.
Several long walks and long conversations form the main body of the film. The real-time drama unfolds the daughter's feelings about her father's idea, and the negative reactions to this by her mother and others.
By accident, she meets an outsider, Ashoke, a young student who has refused a job offer from Indranath. Though nothing develops between them, his presence coupled with the setting of mountains and the failure of her sister's marriage, prompt her to reject the proposed suitor.
At the end of his walk, the industrialist arrives at a rendezvous point, expecting to meet his family and the successful suitor. None of them is present to greet him. As the mist clears, the peak of Kanchenjungha is revealed in its full glory. But Indranath is too pre-occupied to admire it.
Kanchenjungha was Ray's first original screenplay and for the first time, he was shooting in color. The film shows about 100 minutes (in real time) in the life of a group of rich Bengalis on vacation.Unlike the usual Ray films, it has a fragmented narrative with no central characters, and no straight narrative in the classical sense.
It is a very structured and composed film that uses color and nature to heighten the drama. Ray told his biographer Andrew Robinson: "The idea was to have the film starting with sunlight. Then clouds coming, then mist rising, and then mist disappearing, the cloud disappearing, and then the sun shining on the snow-peaks. There is an independent progression to Nature itself, and the story reflects this."
As the weather becomes misty - the young daughter and the suitor part at that point, Indranath meets Ashoke, and the elder daughter, Amina and her husband have a bitter moment between them. And then when the sun appears again - Amina's daughter comes back to her parents and they accept her, the misunderstanding is cleared up, and the younger daughter and Ashoke develop a tentative relationship with a hint of future prospects.
The characters and the Nature are interrelated in mood. In his later film Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Ray attempted quite the opposite. While the Nature is shown in its full glory and lushness, in contrast, the characters starve and do inhuman things.
As the characters do not change the clothes during the film (it being depiction of a real time event that happens in 100 odd minutes), the colors of clothes too add a dimension to the characters.
About Kanchenjungha, Ray told in an interview to Cineaste magazine, "(It was) a very personal film. It was a good ten to fifteen years ahead of its time... Kanchenjungha told the story of several groups of characters and it went back and forth. ... It's a very musical form, but it wasn't liked. The reaction was stupid. Even the reviews were not interesting. But, looking back now, I find that it is a very interesting film."

Zé is a very poor man whose most prized possession is his donkey. When his donkey falls terminally ill, Zé makes a promise to Saint Bárbara: If his donkey recovers, he will carry a cross - like Jesus - all the way from his city to Saint Bárbara's church, in the state capital. Upon the recovery of his donkey, Zé leaves on his journey. He makes it to the church, but the priest refuses to accept the cross once he discovers the context of Zé's promise.

1962 film by Agnès Varda

A man is sent back and forth and in and out of time in an experiment that attempts to unravel the fate and the solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world during the aftermath of WW3. The experiment results in him getting caught up in a perpetual reminiscence of past events that are recreated on an airport’s viewing pier.

After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

1962 Italian film by Francesco Rosi

Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.

A money order from a relative in Paris throws the life of a Senegalese family man out of order. He deals with corruption, greed, problematic family members, the locals and the changing from his traditional way of living to a more modern one.

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

1961 film by Alain Resnais

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

1961 film by Ingmar Bergman

1960 film by Ingmar Bergman