Festival! on DVD

October 24, 2005

Festival!, Murray Lerner's ground-breaking 1967 documentary of the four pivotal Newport Folk Festivals, has just been released on DVD (it has not been previously available on VHS). The Oscar-nominated film combines interview and performance footage from all four years to paint a picture of the folk music revival at its most volatile - as the commercial popularity of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez (and other younger artists) clashed with the earnest, political lifestyle of Pete Seeger and the traditionalists. A snapshot of a moment in time, Festival! presents Newport as a contemporary event. Martin Scorsese used parts of the doc in his recent Dylan bio-pic. Lerner also directed and produced A Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Fest, a documentary from 1970 (which didn't see release until 1995) that goes behind the scenes of a Woodstock-like music festival.