Light & Verity

Reunion revisited

A 1969 film captured a Yale reunion of the Mad Men era.

In 1969, Richard Patterson ’64 and George McQuilkin ’64 came back to Yale with a camera and tape recorder and made a documentary film about that year’s Yale College reunions. Newly released on DVD, in conjunction with the class’s 50th reunion, the 47-minute film Reunion is very much a product of its time: New York mayor John Lindsay ’44 (bottom right) lands by helicopter and works the crowd at his class picnic, and a student reunion clerk predicts that the alumni he’s serving are “going to be eliminated when the revolution comes.” But its impressionistic glimpses of awkward encounters, renewed friendship, and wistful nostalgia also have a timeless quality. The DVD is available from Amazon, or you can watch it online for free at vimeo.com/85168316.

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