| Woodstock | |
|---|---|
Film poster by Richard Amsel |
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| Directed by | Michael Wadleigh |
| Produced by | Bob Maurice |
| Editing by | Michael Wadleigh Martin Scorsese Stan Warnow Yeu-Bun Yee Jere Huggins Thelma Schoonmaker |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | March 26, 1970 |
| Running time | 184 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $600,000 |
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. Entertainment Weekly called this film the benchmark of concert movies and one of the most entertaining documentaries ever made.[1] The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and was edited by (amongst others) Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker; Schoonmaker was nominated for an Academy Award for Film Editing.
It received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, as well as a nomination for Best Sound (Dan Wallin, L. A. Johnson).[2][3] The film was also screened at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.[4] The Official Director's Cut, spanning 225 minutes, was released in 1994.
Both cuts take liberties with the timeline of the festival. However, the opening and closing acts are the same in the film as in real life, i.e., Richie Havens opens the show and Jimi Hendrix closes it.
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock was also released separately on DVD and blu-ray.
In 1996, Woodstock was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". An expanded edition of Woodstock, the movie, released on June 9, 2009 in Blu-ray and DVD formats, features additional performances not before seen in the film, and also includes lengthened versions of existing performances featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and others.
Contents |
* studio recording from an album by the artist
** director's cut only, not in the original theatrical release
In 1994 a director's cut (subtitled 3 Days of Peace & Music) was released that added over 40 minutes to the film and included performances by Canned Heat, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin that were omitted from the original release. Jimi Hendrix's set at the end of the film was also extended with two additional numbers. Some of the crowd scenes in the original film were replaced by previously unseen footage.
After the closing credits (to Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Find the Cost of Freedom")[5] a list of prominent people from the "Woodstock Generation" who had died is shown, including John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mama Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Max Yasgur, Abbie Hoffman, Paul Butterfield, Keith Moon, Bob Hite, Richard Manuel, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. It ends with the epitaph to the right:
On June 9, 2009 a remastered 40th Anniversary edition was released on both Blu-ray and DVD. The 40th Anniversary edition is available as both a two-disc "Special Edition" and a three-disc "Ultimate Collector’s Edition". The film was newly remastered and provided a new 5.1 audio mix. Two extra hours of rare performance footage, features 18 new performances as never before seen from 13 groups, including Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker and five (Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Johnny Winter and Mountain) who played at Woodstock but never appeared in any film version.
The previous DVD edition was released in 1997, with reviewers on Amazon complaining of its VHS-like quality.[6]
In the science fiction thriller The Omega Man, Colonel Robert Neville (played by Charlton Heston) is seen traveling to a movie theatre in Los Angeles to screen the film alone. Woodstock had been the most recent film debuting prior to the onslaught of biological warfare, and Neville darkly remarks the film is so popular it was "held over for the third straight year". As he repeats some of the dialogue verbatim, it is clear that Neville has repeated the ritual many times during the two years that he has believed himself to be the last man alive on Earth.
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