February 13th-19th, 2026
Sag Harbor, NY – Following the success of last year’s Go West: The Fifties series — and screenings of new restored King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun and Richard Brooks’ The Professionals at the latest Festival of Preservation — the Cinema announces another salute to the westerns with Go West: The Sixties, a weeklong series beginning over Presidents’ Day weekend. This year, the nine-film series will accent the 1960s and feature the work of Howard Hawks, Gordon Douglas, David Miller, John Ford, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and Monte Hellman.
“I am happy that westerns have proved to be popular at the Cinema,” says SHC’s Artistic Director Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan. “I find it a particularly interesting moment to revisit the history of this country. This weeklong program will combine late, crepuscular works by the masters of classic era, such as Ford and Hawks, while also introducing a new generation filmmakers — Leone, Peckinpah and Hellman — who pushed the genre out of the confines of the studios’ aesthetic into new realms of formal and narrative invention.”
The 1960s brought new nuances to the western genre, both stylistically and thematically, trading the stark, silent, often existentially tormented, hero traversing a burgeoning American frontier, a staple of 1950s Westerns, for morally ambiguous antiheroes brawling in lawless frontier towns. The 1960s also brought a new grit to the genre, using stark visuals paired with operatic scores from composers like Ennio Morricone, and infused with revisionist themes. Often the films also mirrored the complicated moral shifts of the decade created by the uncertainty emerging from the Cold War, the trauma of the Vietnam War, the rise of counterculture and skepticism, and general social unrest.
Go West runs from February 14-19th, with each film playing twice. Tickets are available individually or as a ‘Canyon Pass’ which is $55 for non-members or $30 for members and permits guests to attend each film one time.
The full lineup with times, tickets and passes will be available at the box office or sagharborcinema.org.
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ABOUT THE FILMS
EL DORADO
Directed by Howard Hawks
USA | 1966 | 126 mins | English
Heartless tycoon Bart Jason (Edward Asner) hires a group of thugs to force the MacDonald family out of El Dorado so he can claim their land. J.P. Harrah, the town’s sheriff, is too deep in the throes of alcoholism to help the family. When Harrah’s friend, noble elder gunfighter Cole Thorton (John Wayne), learns of the predicament, he travels to El Dorado with his upstart friend, Mississippi (James Caan), to help Harrah clean up in time for a shootout against Jason’s men.
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GOLD OF THE SEVEN SAINTS
Directed by Gordon Douglas
USA | 1961 | 88 mins | English
After discovering a fortune in gold nuggets, Shaun Garrett (Roger Moore) and his partner, Jim Rainbolt (Clint Walker), make their way toward the town of Seven Saints to redeem it for cash. Word of their find reaches bandit McCracken (Gene Evans), who comes after them. The men hide their treasure and fend off McCracken with the help of Doc Gates (Chill Wills), before escaping to recover at the ranch of Rainbolt’s friend, Amos Gondora (Robert Middleton), waiting until they can retrieve the gold.
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LONELY ARE THE BRAVE
Directed by David Miller
USA | 1962 | 107 mins | English
Ranch hand Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) feels out of place in the modern world. Jack deliberately gets into a barroom fight to be imprisoned alongside friend Paul (Michael Kane), arrested for helping illegal aliens. Jack tries to convince Paul to flee with him, but, as a family man, Paul has too much at stake. After a beating from a sadistic police deputy (George Kennedy) and heads for the hills, he escapes. An extensive manhunt breaks out, led by sympathetic Sheriff Johnson (Walter Matthau).
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THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
Directed by John Ford
USA | 1962 | 123 mins | English
Questions arise when Senator Stoddard (James Stewart) attends the funeral of a local man named Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) in a small Western town. Flashing back, we learn Doniphon saved Stoddard, then a lawyer, when he was roughed up by a crew of outlaws terrorizing the town, led by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). As the territory’s safety hung in the balance, Doniphon and Stoddard, two of the only people standing up to him, proved to be very important, but different, foes to Valance.
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
Directed by Sergio Leone
USA/Italy | 1968 | 166 mins | English
There’s a single piece of land around Flagstone with water on it, and rail baron Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) aims to have it, knowing the new railroad will have to stop there. He sends his henchman Frank (Henry Fonda) to scare the land’s owner, McBain (Frank Wolff), but Frank kills him instead and pins it on a known bandit, Cheyenne (Jason Robards). Meanwhile, a mysterious gunslinger with a score to settle (Charles Bronson) and McBain’s new wife, Jill (Claudia Cardinale), arrive in town.
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RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
USA | 1962 | 94 mins | English
Reduced to transporting gold from a distant mine to a small-town bank, retired lawman Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) recruits friend Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), who has been performing in a traveling carnival. Unknown to Steve, the restless Gil and a young drifter intend to steal the next gold transport. On the way, the men help Elsa Knudsen (Mariette Hartley) to break free from her zealot father and join her fiancé at the mine, not realizing the consequences that await them all.
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THE SHOOTING
Directed by Monte Hellman
USA | 1966 | 82 mins | English
In the American West, Willet Gashade (Warren Oates), a former bounty hunter, and Coley Boyard (Will Hutchins), his dimwitted partner, are approached by a secretive young woman (Millie Perkins) who offers them money to guide her through the desert but refuses to discuss why she is traveling. The group embarks on the journey and is eventually joined by Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson), a volatile gunslinger the woman has also hired. The only question is why.
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TWO RODE TOGETHER
Directed by John Ford
USA | 1961 | 109 mins | English
For a fee, hard-drinking Texas marshal Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart) agrees to help Army officer Jim Gary (Richard Widmark) search for a group of whites who were abducted years earlier by Comanche warriors. After rescuing two of the abductees, McCabe and Gary find that the former captives have fully adopted the culture of their American Indian captors and are barely recognizable. Cultures collide as they attempt to return the settlers to their original — and now long-forgotten — lives.
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THE WILD BUNCH
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
USA | 1969 | 145 mins | English
In this gritty Western classic, aging outlaw Pike Bishop (William Holden) prepares to retire after one final robbery. Joined by his gang, which includes Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) and brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson), Bishop discovers the heist is a setup orchestrated in part by his old partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan). As the remaining gang takes refuge in Mexican territory, Thornton trails them, resulting in fierce gunfights with plenty of casualties.
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About the Sag Harbor Cinema
As a not-for-profit 501(c)3, community-based organization, Sag Harbor Cinema is dedicated to presenting the past, present and future of the Movies and to preserving and educating about films, filmmaking, and the film-going experience in its three state-of-the-art theaters. The Cinema engages its audiences and the community year-round through dialogue, discovery, and appreciation of the moving image – from blockbusters to student shorts and everything in between. Revitalized and reimagined through unprecedented community efforts to rebuild the iconic Main Street structure after a fire nearly destroyed it in 2016, SHC continues a long historic tradition of entertainment in the heart of Sag Harbor Village.