User reviews

Director Murray Lerner makes this black and white documentary of the Folk Music at Newport from 1963 to 1966, entwining interviews with the audiences that highlight the importance of the folk music and performances of artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter,Paul and Mary, Donovan, Howlin' Wolf and Johnny Cash.

"Festival" is a testimony of magic moments of the 60's that will never happen again. Who could imagine in the present days an artist like Bob Dylan asking for a harmonica to the audience to play Mr.Tambourine Man; or Peter, Paul and Mary in trouble with the microphones; or Peter Yarrow changing the tune of his guitar while singing with Joan Baez; or the artists so close to the audience. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Festival"

Sometimes Stunning Encapsulation of the Newport Jazz Festivals of 1963-1966.

The Opening Scene is a Cultural Cornerstone.

It's a Fixed Camera with Hordes of Young and Old Folks Entering the Festival Grounds and is a "Snapshot" in Time that would be Imitated in the Pop-Culture Movements of "Monterey Pop" (1967) and then "Woodstock" (1969).

And Virtually Every Documentary Featuring a Music or Concert "Festival".

It is a Bona-Fide Classic.

Considering the Film and Audio Available at the Time, the Images and the Sound are Impressive.

Also Impressive is the way Murray Lerner Cross-Cuts between Performances and Patrons to Create a Unique and Unforgettable "You-Are-There" Experience.

You get to See a Young and Relatively "New" Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in a Fair Amount of Footage.

The Infamous Dylan "Plugging-In" to Electric sent Shock Waves through the Folk Movement as He Delivers a Searing Rendition of "Maggie's Farm".

If one was to Fault the Film...There is a Mysterious and Lengthy Amount of Peter, Paul, and Mary and Judy Collins Footage.

Some other Performers such as Johnny Cash, Barely Registers 3 minutes.

But Overall it is a Good Cross-Section of Acts that Stretch to Include Mike Bloomfield, Son House, Gospel Singers, Folk-Dancing and More.

A Must See Event that is Essential for Music Lovers and Pop-Culture Historians.

It's the One that Started it All and Did So in Fantastic Fashion.

Festival is sadly among the missing documents of an era in popular music that continues to fascinate. After a brief theatrical run in 1967, the film continued to show up at repertory theaters through the next decade. But with the advent of home video, problems with wider distribution arose, due to clearing music performance rights. Thus, any opportunity to see this film should be taken. Director Murray Lerner hung out at four Newport Folk Festivals (1963-1966), recording performances, interviews, and crowd shots. Editing all of this footage into less than 100 minutes of film inevitably meant compromises; there are no complete performances, the interviews are brief. But the feeling for an era remains, and the most electric moment (literally) involves that famous (or infamous) 1965 performance by Bob Dylan, when he plugged in his guitar and played with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Among the highlights are several involving veteran bluesmen like Son House breaking through to a mostly white, college-age crowd.

I saw this excellent film on television recently and was knocked out by a dance performance about halfway through. Four male-female pairs of dancers (The Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers) go through what I assume is traditional 19th-century (?) clog-dance figures to the music of a small acoustic band including Pete Seeger. The dancing is wonderfully rhythmic with lots of on-the-beat clog-stamping. It's wonderful to watch and listen to, and it looks great fun - the dancers and the musicians are consciously acting out some folk heritage, and pointing out the riches and the enjoyment to be found there ("Folks made their own entertainment then and I purely doubt that you and MTV can show me anything better!"). That's the Newport message, and these few minutes deliver it splendidly.

Fortunately, "Festival" is now available on DVD which I recently purchased. The performances (though incomplete), the interviews, and crowd shots make it a worthwhile 95 minutes of viewing. For me, it wasn't enough. I was yearning for more, more, and more. Here's why: There simply isn't much history available about the Newport Folk Festival and the folk music revival of the 60s except for excerpts here and there but never in complete document form. Many of the artists who appear in this film are long deceased, and with their departure, so is their body of work which in large part, is out of print and rare. The best known performers in the film (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary) are still active to this day yet it's fascinating and at times, amusing, to see them frolicking in some (until now) rare footage. I recommend it as a companion to the recent Bob Dylan "No Direction Home" DVD set just released this past summer.

I had never seen this til I got a hold of this copy and love it... There are so many good artists here, who knew? The interviews are often hilarious and a few are pretty interesting. The bit with Joan Baez signing autographs and talking in a car shows that she was more than just another folk star, talking about "alternative" music and culture back in... 1964? The Odetta clip makes me want to dig up her records, the music is so compelling. Even Peter/Paul/Mary sound pretty damn good. I originally tracked this down just to see Dylan's electric performance, which turned out to be more electric than I expected - the guitarist churns out some pretty bitchen' licks - for 1965 this was hardcore! If you liked "Don't Look Back" you'd probably enjoy this. I hope this comes out on DVD with tons of extra footage sometime soon while I'm still alive! apple-o

Filmmaker Murray Lerner documents the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 to 1966. It's in black and white. In addition to the performers, he interviews some of the audiences. The performers include Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Joan Baez has a good size section which includes her interacting with fans. The most interesting is a small scene with Dylan performing with an electric guitar. There is cheering after his set. I'm not sure if that's the 1965 festival when he first returned to electric. All in all, it's a great time capsule of old performances and artists long gone. It is music history.

I had the privilege of attending the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, shortly after my high school graduation. While this documentary covered the four summer events prior to the one that I witnessed in person, this brief visit to the past brought back many pleasant memories. What struck me was how neat and restrained the audience seemed to be in the early 60's as opposed to the much more volatile, highly charged audiences only a few years later.

These earlier years revealed the folk music genre in its relative state of uncorrupted purity before rock and pop music began to influence it literally to death only a few short years later. Also notable was the large number of African American artists who appeared at the Festivals even though the audience remained predominantly white. As the Civil Rights movement progressed, the harmony between the races that existed within it rapidly diminished, as it did within other aspects of American life as I personally experienced it. Significantly, when I attempted to return home to suburban New Jersey from the same 1967 Festival, I was shocked to find myself stranded in New York City due to the suspension of public bus service to my home town, which nervously sat only a few miles down Springfield Avenue from the Newark race riots that had erupted during the very same July weekend. For certain, as Mr. Dylan so brilliantly expressed, "the times they were a changin'", and we had no idea exactly how quickly and how drastic those changes were occurring before our very eyes.

Considering what an enormous impact the 1967 Festival had on my life as a very impressionable teenager, I am sorry to agree with the reviewer, den_Quixote, who wrote one of the few negative critiques here. Although I loved the music, the film was a huge jumble of incoherent sequences that were constantly interrupted at inappropriate moments. The rambling reactions of the audience members were not properly and professionally edited either. Although the biggest stars (Dylan, Baez, Cash, Collins, Bikel, Ste. Marie, PP&M, etc., in no special order) were recognizable, at least to me, I found it very frustrating that none of the performers were identified and that there was no apparent chronology to the four years that were covered. What also hit me as very odd was that the subject of the Vietnam War, which had a huge influence on the folk music genre of the late 1960's and which was, in turn, significantly impacted by the folk music movement of the time, seemed incomprehensibly absent from the film.

I very much wanted to rate this documentary higher but could not do so as a result of all of its disappointing weaknesses. For me, it amounted to a missed opportunity not only to capture a beautiful and important era of genuine American culture but a critical chapter in American history as well. I was sad to return to such an innocent and idealistic period of my own youth but also remorseful that the time and the subject were not presented more effectively and more meaningfully to following generations who need to understand them.

If you're a rabid fan of early to mid 1960's Folk Music, this is the documentary you have been waiting to see. Director Murry Lerner (who also directed an inspired documentary about the Isle Of Wight Festival of 1970) has crafted a well filmed document of four years of the Newport Folk Festival, between 1963 to 1966,including footage of Bob Dylan the first time he plugged in his brand new Stratocaster and played Maggie's Farm for an unsuspecting (and disturbed)audience. The film also makes good use of other Folk icons of the era (Joan Baez,Paul Butterfield,Son House,etc.). This black & white documentary was screened as an "art film", back in the day, and pretty much was forgotten by the end of the 60's, due to the popularity of psychedelic rock (which itself lead to progressive rock,etc.). Worth a watch if you're a fan of Dylan & the rest of the folk scene.

I spoke with Mr. Lerner in 74 and he said that as a Black & White movie, people wouldn't want to see it. At that time vcr's were not very popular and kcet was the only venue. He offered to let me see it at a showing but we hung up with out my giving him my number. I saw segments of festival on the peter, paul and mary documentary the other night. It reminded me how much I would love to see Festival at Newport 1967. I wonder if it is for sale, these days. This was a very valuble documentary with extrodinary montage effects. It was truly neat to see and I hope it makes a return one way or another.

Paul H. Borisoff

Having seen selections from "Festival" peppered throughout the Dylan documentary, "No Direction Home", I was delighted to go to Amazon and find that "Festival" is now available as a DVD. It is a memorable 'snapshot' of the folk movement/culture of the sixties, giving those listening to the music almost as much attention as those performing it. And the breadth of that music - from urban folk to country & urban blues to traditional dance to roots to international - is a reminder of all we were to learn from participating in the then burgeoning folk revival. It seems totally appropriate that the film, which is beautifully shot, is in black and white. Throughout we are treated to images from the era that would become iconic. While watching "Festival" one can't help but wonder how much more footage Mr. Lerner has... And if you like "Festival" you should seek out the treasure of black and white photos from the same era that is the book, "The Face of Folk Music."

Nearly 60 years later, it showed all the wonderful American music that came out of that period. There was a wonderful earnestness, openness and optimism of that time that you could see among those who were in attendance.

I have not seen this film for many years. It's not on video as far as I know, but it should be, because it should be seen by anybody who's interested in the evolution of music, folk & popular, in the US in the 1960's. See this, then see Monterey Pop, then Woodstock. It not only has a number of great blues artists who are now deceased (Howlin' Wolf, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, to name some popular ones), but the magic (or catastrophic, depending on your outlook) moment when Dylan "went electric" in a big venue (Maggie's Farm, etc.).

I saw this movie three times in one night at an all night movie house on Baker street in London in the late 60's. I always wanted to see it again to confirm what I thought I saw! It played with Don't look back and La Grand Maison(or something) a Renoir movie. All great movies. I traced down the other two movies, but not this one. Jane

The strength of this documentary is in its intimacy. We get really up close & personal with the musicians as well as the audience. The Newport Folk Festival was huge, as conveyed in the opening credit scene with a seemingly endless river of people flowing onto the grounds, but for the most part the camera stays tight with the subjects, whether it's Joan Baez signing autographs (and later hi-fiving fans through the window of her car as we ride in the back seat), or eavesdropping on fans camped out, or even on stage during performances where the camera seemed to be within a few feet. Rarely have I seen this approach to filming an event of this magnitude. That's the good.

The bad, or at least the frustrating part, is as I mentioned in my title. While the initial performance (Peter, Paul & Mary) gives us a full song uninterrupted, thus whetting our whistle for more like that, the other acts are cut short. With other big stars like Donovan and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, we sometimes get only 1 verse and the ending of a song. Then we cut back to another performance by Peter, Paul & Mary. I can only guess that there simply wasn't enough footage taken of the other acts. But it's a noticeable flaw in this otherwise all-encompassing taste of what the Festival was like. So if you came here for the music, I'm afraid you won't get your fill. But if you approach it as a talky type documentary with a few clips of performances interspersed, that's what you'll get.

Festival follower Murray Lerner's first major effort at documenting the music scene encapsulates four years of Newport Folk Festival footage in the aptly titled doc, Festival. Disjointed in spots the mind blowing line-up ( Dylan, Collins, Cash, Baez, Odetta, Seeger, Howlin' Wolf, Peter Paul &Mary) in a casual, peaceful, joyous atmosphere more than make up for it as they perform and are interviewed in laid back settings without the diva trappings or security probably best summed up by Dylan on stage asking for a particular harmonica from the audience and the sound of half a dozen landing on on it, one of which he grabs without missing a beat or wiping it off and utilizing.

Given its trailblazer status Festival can be forgiven it's somewhat sloppy and diffuse editing style and frustrating mid performance cuts but it delivers big time in presenting major musical stars both in ascendency and established thrown in with a few living legends. These shows were before Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont and unlike the mood of these rock bacchanals, the vibe in Festival was upbeat, positive from end to end without violence or chemical additives. It is perhaps for this reason we can both celebrate and lament the viewing of this long lost festival of harmony.

I like to watch old footage and hear different people's point of views and I'll give pretty much anything a watch.

I liked some of the artist interviews between performances as well as interviews with various people of the audience.

Overall the music is not for me. It's mostly sloppy and repetitive with even more repetitive lyrics. There are a couple of exceptions, like Donovan performing his song "Colours" for example. I like both the melody and the lyrics of that song.

Festival (1967)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Documentary covering the 1963-66 Newport Music Festival with such acts as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Johnny Cash and of course Peter, Paul and Mary. I had seen several of these artists performances earlier but the real treat here was all the non unknown acts. There was a lot of great music from all (except PP&M and their countless Dylan covers). Another interesting aspect is the crowd stuff and what they all felt folk music was.

Certainly the best of the documentaries looking at this historic event.