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List Price: $14.98Amazon.com's Price: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 (13%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0801213910199
Format: Color, Compilation, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Live, Subtitled, NTSC
Label: Eagle Vision Media
Manufacturer: Eagle Vision Media
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Eagle Vision Media
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 18, 2005
Running Time: 97 minutes
Sales Rank: 24646
Studio: Eagle Vision Media
Theatrical Release Date: October 18, 2005
Editorial Review:
Description:
Murray Lerner’s film 'Festival' is a cinematic synthesis of four Newport Folk Festivals in which the art of folk music is pictured in transition during its most crucial years. The range is from Bob Dylan performing 'Tambourine Man' and Joan Baez doing 'Farewell Angelina,' to country artists like Johnny Cash playing 'I Walk the Line' to the Georgia Sea Island Singers. The range is also from the high-priced professionals like Peter, Paul, and Mary to the authentic folk dignity of living legends such as Son House and Mississippi John Hurt. Joan Baez, Donovan and Judy Collins are all on view, as are Pete Seeger, the Ed Young Fife and Drum Corps and numerous others that give a feeling of community with the whole American present, and continuity with the American past. Indeed, the long-haired Newport audiences pictured sleeping on beaches and on the grounds, in sports cars and battered station wagons, plunking banjoes and guitars, swapping tunes between formal concerts, and talking about folk music, seem not a rupture with the American past, but an expression of carrying forward an American idealism and social concern.
Amazon.com:
It's the big names--like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, and Peter, Paul & Mary--who command most of the attention, but they aren't what director-producer Murray Lerner's Festival!, a 97-minute, black & white chronicle of the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival in 1963, '64, and '65, is really all about. In fact, while those artists were the face of that era's folk boom, their music hasn't aged especially well; with the exception of Dylan (who appears both solo and with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who helped him break the sound barrier in '65) and Cash, their songs were so earnest, their delivery so pristine and humorless, that these days they evoke squirm-inducing parallels to Christopher Guest's folk satire A Mighty Wind. It's the clips of, say, the Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers, with their virtuoso square dance moves; the high, lonesome bluegrass of the Osborne Brothers; the deep gospel of the Georgia Sea Island Singers and the Staple Singers; the down home Delta blues (or, as he spells it, 'b-l-u-s-e') of Son House, or even the astonishing Cousin Emmy, who plays 'Turkey in the Straw' on her cheeks, that remind us that 'folk' encompasses a great deal more than protest singers strumming acoustic guitars. As for Lerner's stated intention to 'make a film about something bigger than music… a film that was an expression of this new culture,' sure, whatever; there are plenty of interviews with artists and concert-goers alike to back that up. But Festival! revolves around the music, and therein lies its major flaw: namely, the lack of complete performances of any songs, which reduces the film's status from essential to merely interesting. --Sam Graham
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - An era of care for the common man galvanized by folk singer activists.
Prior to the assassinations of John, Robert, Martin and Malcolm, there was an optimistic generation that believed they could make a difference. These were the songs. This was the festival. I am grateful to have grown up through those times.
Rating: - Festival by Murray Lerner
I am sure product would be 5 star as it contains rare footage of the great Bob Dylan, however was unable to view on DVD player due to Region Code. (US CONFIGURATION)
Is this product available to be viewed on UK / European DVD players?
Many Thanks
Rating: - Very good value don't expect complete songs though
I am one who loves his concert Dvd's and usually I wouldn't buy a music Dvd which didn't include full length songs, however this is a documentary which runs for a very reasonable time at over one and a half hours, and it includes so much rare fottage of great old artists whom it is very hard to get live footage of. It does actually include quite a few full length songs from Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
The SOUND in this Dvd is fantastic considering how and ... Read More
Rating: - This is not a concert video
This is not a concert video. It is a documentary film that combines concert and audience footage and interviews, and attempts to convey the atmosphere and meaning of the Newport Folk Festival in the first half of the 1960's. As such, it succeeds admirably. Lerner and crew are extremely creative in their camera work and judicious in their editing. They have a wonderful knack for capturing the excitement and diversity of the Festival as well as the hopes, fears, and "humanness" of its attendees. The ... Read More
Rating: - Memory Lane
How low key the festivals of this past era now seem. Audiences actually shut up and listened to the music and lyrics. The music makers cared about the world and influenced a generation, and changed history. A feast of talent presented in an honest and un flashy reality.
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