Reel Classics: ‘Festival’

Today’s Reel Classic looks at a doc­u­men­tary film released in 1967 that focused on the Newport Folk Festival dur­ing the years 1963 through 1966.  Murray Lerner was writer, direc­tor and pro­duc­er of the film.  Festival cap­tures on film not only the musi­cians per­form­ing at these con­certs, but also the essence of the grow­ing coun­ter­cul­ture move­ment with­in our society. 

At that time, folk music was an essen­tial voice for protest and speak­ing out against the per­ceived injus­tices with­in our soci­ety.  Lerner filmed the fes­ti­vals over the course of four years and pro­vides us with a view of not only the music of the time, but of the changes that were occur­ring with­in our society.

The Newport Folk Festival includ­ed not just the pop­u­lar folk musi­cians of the time, but also show­cased blues, coun­try, jug band, and Appalachian music on the stage.  Musicians appear­ing in the film include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Howlin’ Wolf, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, and Mississippi John Hurt.  This is just some of the 30 var­i­ous per­form­ers featured.

It is impor­tant to note though, that it is not a con­cert film. We don’t see long per­for­mances of musi­cians, but instead see clips of their per­for­mances.  The focus is on the cul­tur­al impact of the per­for­mances and the gath­er­ing of those in atten­dance.  The focus was to show how the music being per­formed was a reflec­tion and expres­sion of the changes going on at the time in our society. 

The mid-six­ties were a time of great change with regard to civ­il rights, the anti-war move­ment and the con­tin­ued rise of fem­i­nism.  Folk music was per­ceived as a voice for change. Nineteen six­ty-three was a time of change that includ­ed Martin Luther King Jr. deliv­er­ing his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, Betty Friedan pub­lish­ing her book The Feminine Mystique, as well as the assas­si­na­tion of President John F. Kennedy.  In January 1964, Sam Cooke record­ed “A Change Is Gonna Come” just months after he was arrest­ed in Louisiana for try­ing to check into a “whites only” Holiday Inn.  President Johnson was to pledge con­tin­ued sup­port for the war in Vietnam. 

The Newport Folk Festival began in 1959, man­aged by George Wein.  He had pre­vi­ous­ly set up and man­aged the Newport Jazz Festival start­ing in 1954.  How folk music was per­ceived was as a reflec­tion of the expe­ri­ences of hard­work­ing folks and as an expres­sion of social con­science.  Famous folk singer Woody Guthrie had been doing that for years.  Murray Lerner first got involved with the Newport Folk Festival as a vol­un­teer to film and help pre­serve the events at the fes­ti­val.  He decid­ed to go beyond that and employed a crew to assist him in trav­el­ing through­out the con­cert site inter­view­ing and record­ing both per­form­ers as well as those attend­ing.  Most of those attend­ing were young folks who saw the need for change and felt com­fort in both the music and the shar­ing of the expe­ri­ence with oth­ers.  A quote ear­ly in the film from Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul, and Mary) describes it well:  “Folk music is real­ly the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of a human being extend­ing his hand to anoth­er human being with­out los­ing any of his dig­ni­ty.  We feel this way about it;  walk with us.” 

There is almost as much atten­tion paid to the folks in the crowd as there is to the musi­cians per­form­ing.  Interviews are con­duct­ed with var­i­ous atten­dees.  Many came bring­ing their own gui­tars, ban­jos and har­mon­i­cas and the gath­er­ings pro­duced music from the folks grouped in cir­cles.  Pete Seeger talked about the val­ue of the fes­ti­val and why it was so important. 

“Why have we done this?  Because, we believe in the idea that the aver­age man and woman can make his own music.  In this machine age, it does­n’t all have to come out of a loud speak­er.  You can make it your­self, whether you want to shout or croon, sing sweet or rough.  And it can be your own music.  And when I say your own, music of your own kind, whether it’s your fam­i­ly or your town or your region, your race or your place, your reli­gion or what­ev­er it is,” he said.

In his review of the film, Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars out of four.  He praised Murray Lerner for mak­ing “full use of the strength of doc­u­men­tary film, the abil­i­ty to catch unre­hearsed moments that reveal personality.” 

An exam­ple was when he described the inter­view with Mississippi John Hurt:  “It would have been easy to get cheap laughs by cut­ting from the tra­di­tion­al per­form­ers to the col­lege kids, but Lerner went for depth instead.  You see Mississippi John Hurt singing, and then he talks about blues bands:  ‘The way I see it, and I was talkin’ to the rev­erend (Reverend Wilkins) about it this morn­ing, if it’s the blues, then they ain’t no jump­ing to it.  If you’re jump­ing, you ain’t got the blues.  The blues are kind of mourn­ful and sad, like when you lock your­self in a room and don’t want to see nobody ...’ .” 

In prais­ing the edi­tors of the film, Ebert said, “They make their points qui­et­ly, with humor and under­state­ment.  The result is mar­velous­ly entertaining.” 

Festival won an award at the 1967 Venice Film Festival and was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for Best Documentary at the 1968 Academy Awards.  Murray Lerner went on to direct and pro­duce many doc­u­men­taries focused on music.  Some of the films he is not­ed for include From Mao to Mozart:  Isaac Stern in China (1979 and an Oscar win­ner), Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight (1991) and Miles Electric:  A Different Kind of Blue (2004). 

A more recent review from the mag­a­zine Slant in 2017 pro­vides a more mod­ern per­spec­tive on the film.  “For a cit­i­zen of 2017, the most poignant recur­ring image in Murray Lerner’s Festival might be of the audi­ence at the Newport Folk Festival, gath­ered around lis­ten­ing intent­ly to the con­cert per­for­mances .... The film fea­tures a soci­ety that’s a ways away from cell­phones and iPads.  And the sight of peo­ple direct­ly engag­ing with some­thing in front of them, their atten­tion large­ly undi­vid­ed by cease­less adver­tise­ments and ven­dors, sug­gests a lost com­mu­nal oasis.” 

Interestingly, it so hap­pened that at one of these con­certs (1965) Lerner cap­tured on film when Bob Dylan chose to go elec­tric on stage.  His choice to do so upset many of the folk purists attend­ing the show.  Pete Seeger was espe­cial­ly upset.  This per­for­mance has become one of the most note-wor­thy per­for­mances at the Newport Folk Festival.  Dylan did not return to the stage of the Newport Folk Festival for 37 years.  Though some were upset with his move, oth­ers praised his effort.  In the year 2026 we all know he sur­vived the rad­i­cal change very well and has had a very suc­cess­ful and influ­en­tial career.

After Festival we would see oth­er doc­u­men­taries focused on the music, the peo­ple and the times of the six­ties.  These includ­ed Monterey Pop (1968), Woodstock (1970) and Gimme Shelter (1970).  It was not until 2021 that we saw the film that doc­u­ment­ed anoth­er amaz­ing con­cert from that peri­od in 1969—Summer of Soul (... Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised).

The Internet Movie Database gives Festival a score of 7.5 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics’ Score of 100% and an Audience Score of 73%.  In search­ing my Roku device, I could find no free stream­ing sites and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Clark County Public Library does not have a copy of the DVD on the shelf.  I do believe that the staff there would obtain a copy if you ask.  I do encour­age you to watch it if you can as it is as much a les­son in our his­to­ry as it is enter­tain­ment.  And please check out the trail­er below.  It will give you an excel­lent insight into what the film presents. 

In clos­ing, I would like to return to the review from the mag­a­zine Slant:  “Festival brings to life a mythol­o­gized time, cap­tur­ing the roots of its cre­ation.  The Newport Folk Festival offered a glimpse of the crys­tal­liza­tion of the coun­ter­cul­ture, in the wake of the racism and atom­ic fears of the 1950s and the already years-long war in Vietnam.” 

I have long stat­ed that, to me, music is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage.  It can bring us togeth­er, and it can help us express our joys as well as our fears.  But let us not for­get that it can bring us togeth­er, and these days we need to be togeth­er.  I will end with the lyrics from the song “Get Together” by The Youngbloods that came from this peri­od of time but rings just as true today. 

If you hear the song I sing
You will under­stand (lis­ten!)
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trem­bling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your com­mand
Come on peo­ple now
Smile on your broth­er
Everybody get togeth­er
Try to love one anoth­er right now

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, the video of this trail­er can­not be embed­ded here, but you can view it on YouTube via this link: https://youtu.be/h2PPEyMLZAU