Plots(1)
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. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Cast
Joan Baez
USA
Best movies:
Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour Live (2015) (concert)
Theodore Bikel
Austria
Best movies:
My Fair Lady (1964)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
The African Queen (1951)
Bob Dylan
USA
Best movies:
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
I'm Not There (2007) - a.f.
Steve Jobs (2015) - a.f.
Pete Seeger
USA
Best movies:
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)
Alice's Restaurant (1969)
We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial (2009) (concert)
Roy Kinnear
UK
Best movies:
The Hill (1965)
Pavlova: A Woman for All Time (1983)
The Three Musketeers (1973)
Mike Bloomfield
USA
Donovan
UK
Best movies:
If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969)
Sgt. Pepper (1978)