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The Who work out their 1978 classic “Who Are You” in a clip from their career-spanning documentary, Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who, which is now available to stream for the first time on the Coda Collection.

The clip features some raw footage of the Who performing an energetic, albeit somewhat shaky version of “Who Are You” while filming their 1979 documentary, The Kids Are Alright. The performance marked the band’s first time together in more than a year, and as Pete Townshend quips in the clip, “Unfortunately the band didn’t play as well,...

Fifty years ago this month, somewhere in the ballpark of 600,000 music fans schlepped over to England’s Isle of Wight to witness one of the greatest festivals in rock history. It featured Woodstock veterans the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Richie Havens, Ten Years After, John Sebastian, Melanie, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens alongside Miles Davis, the Doors, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Chicago, Elp, Free, the Moody Blues, Procul Harum, Tiny Tim, and many others.

A professional camera crew overseen by filmmaker Murray Lerner was on hand...

Museum of Arts and Design Assistant Curator Barbara Paris Gifford, London's Fashion and Textile Museum curator Dennis Nothdruft, Anna Sui, and Mad's Nanette L. Laitman Director Chris Scoates at the press preview for The World of Anna Sui Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the press preview for The World Of Anna Sui, the Museum of Arts and Design Assistant Curator Barbara Paris Gifford told me that Sofia Coppola will present a "special version" of Marie Antoinette, followed by a conversation with Anna Sui and the director. She also noted that Luchino Visconti's The Damned was an influence on Anna's Grunge collection. I passed on greetings to Anna Sui from 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, who produced the Bush Tetras' Too Many Creeps, a song Anna used in her runway show for the Punk collection. She told me about her connection to Murray Lerner's film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez,...

The Mulan International Film Festival (MulanIFF) is dedicated to showcasing the best of

Chinese-language films and historically significant films about China. The first edition of the

festival will be held from August 10 to August 17, 2018, in downtown Toronto. It will open with “Wrath of Silence”, a powerful drama based in Northern China by rising star director Xin Yukun, and will close with veteran actress-director Sylvia Chang’s moving family story “Love Education”.

The 2018 festival consists of 17 titles from Canada, China, Us and UK under three

programmes: China Retrospective, Made by Women and Portraits of the Young.

• China Retrospective features films by widely acclaimed directors that reflect the

development and changes of modern China.

• Made by Women focuses on female filmmakers and their works, as well as female

protagonists in films. This programmes is funded by the Government of Ontario.

• Portraits of the Young discovers pioneering works by emerging filmmakers.

China Retrospective...

The upcoming 90th Academy Awards will mark the 25th consecutive year that the Oscars will feature an “In Memoriam” segment. While it had been done on occasion before, the annual tribute to Academy members and other film legends started a regular tradition at the 1994 ceremony hosted by Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg.

SEE2018 Oscars: Best Song performers include Mary J. Blige, Common, Andra Day, Keala Settle, Sufjan Stevens

We’ve assembled a list below of people who have died in the past 12 months who might be featured during the “In Memoriam” for the ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on March 4. Producers have not yet revealed who might be performing during the tribute. Sure to have prominent placements are previous Oscar champ Martin Landau (“Ed Wood,” 1994), honorary Oscar recipient Jerry Lewis and respected actor Bill Paxton (“Titanic,” “Apollo 13”). Paxton actually died on the weekend of last year’s ceremony and was mentioned on the broadcast,...

The Doors' legendary performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival will be available for the first time on DVD and CD February 23rd. The festival is thought to be the last filmed Doors concert. 

A new trailer for The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 teases snippets of the Doors' 2 a.m. set and includes shots of them performing "Light My Fire" and "Break on Through." The clip also teases unique footage of the Isle of Wight crowd, a particular fascination of the film's director, Murray Lerner.

Live at...

The Doors' legendary performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival will be available for the first time on DVD and CD February 23rd. The festival is thought to be the last filmed Doors concert. 

A new trailer for The Doors: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 teases snippets of the Doors' 2 a.m. set and includes shots of them performing "Light My Fire" and "Break on Through." The clip also teases unique footage of the Isle of Wight crowd, a particular fascination of the film's director, Murray Lerner.

Live at...

By Hank Reineke

From 1963 through 1966 Murray Lerner would make the yearly trek from New York City to the tony seaside town of Newport, Rhode Island. Once there, the documentarian seemingly photographed every major and minor player of the 1960’s folk music craze for his resulting award-winning film Festival (1967). Depending on one’s personal taste in music, the celluloid snippets offered in the film’s final edit – several capturing folk and blues artists performing in the prime of their careers – are either frustratingly truncated or mercifully brief in length.

As a lifelong folk music enthusiast, I would find this film a treasure even if the film’s “star players” (Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary) were not featured. Watching snippets of such legends as Son House or Mississippi John Hurt sing the blues, Tex Logan and the Lilly Bros. sing their brand of high, lonesome bluegrass or Minneapolis’ Spider John...

Apparently concert documentaries are having a bit of a moment. Between the recent release of the Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray of Murray Lerner’s Festival and the theatrical run of films like May It Last, the last month or so has seen a number of concert documentaries thrust back into the spotlight. Hell, even the rarely seen Prince documentary Sign O’ The Times recently got a new lease on life thanks to a streaming debut thanks to Showtime. All of this is to say that fans of music-centric documentaries are in the middle of a brief golden age.

The latest addition to this list of documentaries chronicling a band, a performance or a series of performances is Let’s Play Two: Pearl Jam Live At Wrigley Field. As the title would have you believe, the film shines a light on two vastly different worlds, rock music and professional baseball.

Aaron is joined by David Blakeslee and Matt Gasteier as they take a detour from Criterion to talk about art music in general. We tie it to the label by doing a bracket challenge for the best Criterion music on disc, but we also talk about our personal experiences and tastes in music, and have a short debate about whether rock is dead. We include some Criterion news and FilmStruck, including Peter Becker’s interview and some recent Oop titles on streaming.

Episode Notes

11:30 – Our Music Backgrounds

33:45 – The Criterion Music Bracket Challenge

40:40 – Piece of Flair (Flipper, Bjork, The Strokes)

54:30 – Short Takes (Science is Fiction, Koyaanisqatsi, Inside Llewyn Davis)

1:03:00 – Murray Lerner’s Festival

1:23:00 – Is Rock Dead?

1:50:00 – FilmStruck

Episode Links Criterion Reflections Podcast CriterionCast 186: An Autumn Afternoon Criterion Close-Up 61 – The Rose The Criterion Completion – Hour 8 Matt Gasteier – 33 1/3 Nas’ Illmatic The Focus...

The music documentary comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. For fans of live experiences, you have your Woodstock, and for those who like a bit more of a behind the scenes vibe, you have something like the recently-released May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers. There are films that subvert those two modese, like the impossibly powerful White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights, and some that go the historical route such as Ken Burns’ Jazz. However, there is not another music documentary quite like Festival.

Shot by director Murray Lerner at the annual Newport Folk Festival from 1963-1966, Festival tells not only the story of folk music at its historic peak, but even more so the politics of the movement that brought it to the fore. Driven by performances ranging from Joan Baez to Howlin’ Wolf, Festival is an iconic, gorgeously composed meditation on America...

Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner, who captured Bob Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and preserved legendary music acts like Jimi Hendrix and Leonard Cohen forever on film, has died, said his son, Noah. He was 90.

Lerner died Sunday in New York City, his son said.

The filmmaker earned an Oscar nomination in 1967 for Festival, his examination of the Newport Folk Festival, and won the best documentary statuette in 1981 for From Mao to Mozart, which followed violinist Isaac Stern in China. In 2009, he received a Grammy nomination for Amazing Journey: The Story of...

Famed music documentarian Murray Lerner, who captured Bob Dylan going electric and Jimi Hendrix's legendary Isle of Wight performance, died Saturday from kidney failure, Variety reports. He was 90.

Lerner's son, Noah, said the filmmaker died at his home in Long Island City, New York after falling ill about three months ago. "He was a complete filmmaker," Noah Lerner said. "A cinematographer first and foremost, but someone who also wrote, edited, produced and directed."

Along with Dylan and Hendrix, Lerner's myriad subjects included the Who, Miles Davis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Leonard Cohen.

We thought all the great vintage music documentaries were accounted for, but Murray Lerner’s look at the Newport Folk Festival in the mid-‘sixties is a terrific time machine to a kindler, gentler musical era. The mix of talent is broad and deep, and we get to see excellent vintage coverage of some real legends, before the hype & marketing plague arrived.

Festival: Folk Music at Newport, 1963-1966

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 892

1967 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 97 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 12, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers, Odetta, Ronnie Gilbert, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Theodore Bikel, Cousin Emmy, Horton Barker, Fiddler Beers, Mimi Fariña, Richard Farina, Mrs. Ollie Gilbert, Fannie Lou Hamer, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, John Koerner, Jim Kweskin, Tex Logan, Mel Lyman, Spokes Mashiyane, Fred McDowell, Brownie McGhee, Pappy Clayton McMichen,...

A varied bag of goodies await fans of the Criterion Collection in September. Digging back into the musical thrills of the mid-1960s, Murray Lerner's documentary Festival examines the Newport Folk Festival from 1963-1966, when the very idea of "folk music" was undergoing a galvanic redefinition. The new disk will include additional footage from the festivals, which showcased the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash and the Staples Singers. Perhaps appropriately for the early days of the fall school term in North America, Michael Haneke offers twisted lessons in The Piano Teacher, starring Isabelle Huppert. And we can all learn a lot from watching Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood production, Rebecca, which demonstrated that gothic melodramas could be quite thrilling. Criterion will also release two...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

While the vast majority of our favorite films of last year have been treated with Blu-ray releases, one title near the top of the list we’ve been waiting the longest for is Kelly Reichardt‘s Certain Women. It looks like it’s been worth the wait as The Criterion Collection have unveiled their September releases and it’s leading the pack (with special features also an interview with the director and Todd Haynes!).

Also getting a release in September, is Michael Haneke‘s Isabelle Huppert-led The Piano Teacher and the recent documentary David Lynch: The Art Life (arriving perfectly-timed to the end of the new Twin Peaks). There’s also Alfred Hitchcock‘s classic psychodrama Rebecca and the concert film Festival, featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many more.

Check out the high-resolution cover art and full details on the releases below, with more on Criterion’s site.

Five new movies are joining the Criterion Collection in September, two of which were released in the last year: Kelly Reichardt’s spare, moving “Certain Women” and the documentary “David Lynch: The Art Life.” Also getting the Criterion treatment are Michael Haneke’s “The Piancho Teacher,” starring Isabelle Huppert; “Rebecca,” Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel and his first American production; and Murray Lerner’s documentary “Festival,” which features performances by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, among others.

It isn’t Criterion’s most exciting month, but there’s still much to look forward to. Details below, including Criterion’s own descriptions:

Read More: Criterion Collection Announces August 2017 Additions, Including Restored ‘Sid & Nancy’ and Mike Leigh’s ‘Meantime’

“Rebecca”

“Romance becomes psychodrama in Alfred Hitchcock’s elegantly crafted ‘Rebecca,’ his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, the film...

Bob Dylan turns 76 today and we’re ranking Dylan’s 10 best film performances, dating back half a century to 1967. The key word is “performances,” which encompass acting work, concert films, and documentaries. It’s often hard to know when Dylan is acting and when he’s being himself (whoever that is), but whenever the iconic singer-songwriter appears on film, one thing’s for certain: you’re watching a performance.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Look Back’ Gets Deluxe Treatment With New Blu-ray Set

For this reason, we’re lumping everything together, ranking the films based on the depth and richness of performance. It was hard not to include the televised 1965 press conference in San Francisco, which sees Dylan effortlessly (and hilariously) shoot down reporters’ attempts to have him label himself, but we limited this list to feature-length films. Don’t look for Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” or any...

By Patrick Shanley

Managing Editor

This year’s best documentary feature nominees continues a long trend of music docs being recognized by the Academy, as two music-related films have earned nominations at this year’s Oscars.

Amy, which tells the story of late songstress Amy Winehouse in her own words through never-before-seen archival footage and unreleased tracks and is nominated for best doc this year, earned nominations for the Queer Palm and Golden Eye awards at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival for director Asif Kapadia.

Filmmaker Liz Garbus earned the second nomination of her career with the Netflix documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? The film focuses on the life of iconic R&B singer Nina Simone and her life as a singer, mother, and civil rights activist. Garbus earned her first Oscar nomination in 1998 for her documentary The Farm: Angola, USA.

Music-related docs have been a hot topic for the Academy in years past,...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Keep on Keepin’ On, director Alan Hicks’ debut film, follows four years of the friendship and mentorship between jazz legend and trumpeter Clark Terry, who played with Count Basie and Duke Ellington and taught a young Quincy Jones how to play, and Justin Kauflin, a talented 23-year-old blind pianist. The two musicians support each other as Terry begins to lose his eyesight due to health issues and as Kauflin deals with stage fright as a semi-finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. The film is one of 15 films on the Oscar documentary shortlist, five of which will be nominated on Jan. 15.

The Academy is particularly fond of music-related documentaries, nominating 17 since 1942, with eight winning. Keep on Keepin’ On could join the following Oscar-nominated films:

Festival (1967)

Director Murray Lerner’s black-and-white documentary offers a glimpse into three years (1963-1966) of the Newport Folk Festival, which...

Bob Dylan, Festival Bob Dylan, along with Joan Baez; Judy Collins; Peter, Paul and Mary's Peter Yarrow; Donovan; Odetta; Son House; and others, is featured in Murray Lerner's Festival. Nominated for the 1967 Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category, Festival will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Monday Nights with Oscar series on Monday, July 18, at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Murray Lerner and Peter Yarrow. Lerner went on to direct Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight and The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival. He won an Academy Award for his 1980 documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China. The Academy Theater is located at 111 East 59th Street (between Park and Lexington avenues) in New York City.

Judy Collins, Festival Judy Collins; Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary's Peter Yarrow; Donovan; and Odetta, are some of the performers featured in Murray Lerner's 1967 Academy Award-nominated documentary Festival. The film will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Monday Nights with Oscar series on Monday, July 18, at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Murray Lerner and Peter Yarrow. The Academy Theater is located at 111 East 59th Street (between Park and Lexington avenues) in New York City. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.oscars.org or call (212) 821-9251. Photo: Courtesy of AMPAS...

Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary's Peter Yarrow, Festival Murray Lerner's 1967 Academy Award-nominated documentary Festival will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Monday Nights with Oscar series on Monday, July 18, at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater at Lighthouse International in New York City. The program will feature a newly struck print from the Academy Film Archive and will include a post-screening chat with Lerner and Peter, Paul and Mary singer Peter Yarrow. From the Academy's press release: Festival captures the annual Newport Folk Festival from 1963–66, including live performances by an all-star lineup of such folk music pioneers as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Judy Collins, and Peter, Paul and Mary, as well as interviews with festival attendees and conversations with artists on topics ranging from musical philosophy to the appeal of folk style. Lerner also directed Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight...

The legendary Bob Dylan turned 70 years old on May 24th. This article takes a close look at his association with the movies…

Bob Dylan had his first acting gig aged 21 on British TV with a play called Madhouse on Castle Street. His eponymously-titled first album had been released but few people in Britain would have known him; this was a few months before Freewheelin’ hit the shelves and Dylan-fever (which is like Beatlemania, only less wild and more pretentious) swept the Western world. He was intended to play the lead but quickly proved that he wasn’t interested in learning lines and was perhaps more interested in his recent discovery of cannabis, so David Warner was hired as the lead and Dylan provided a Greek chorus to the action.

In its wisdom, the BBC has long since destroyed the footage so it’s not easy to gauge how people would...

Updated through 5/25.

"In his nonmusical writing, the teasing, puzzling, half-nonsensical 'novel' Tarantula pales in strangeness next to the matter-of-factly autobiographical Chronicles," Ao Scott wrote last week in the New York Times. "And, similarly, while cinematically inclined Dylanophiles might want to sample the eccentricities of Renaldo and Clara or Masked and Anonymous — or the brilliantly elusive kaleidoscope of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There — the full mystery of Bob Dylan is better grasped in documentary form." That piece ran as Film Forum's double Dylan doc feature opened and, as Dylan turns 70 today, there's one night, tonight, left to catch it: Da Pennebaker's Don't Look Now (1967) — at Alt Screen, Brynn White gathers critical takes and a clip — and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, a "compendium of Newport Folk Festival concert footage from the early 1960s."

Don't Look Back also screens tonight at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part...

Austin, TX – The Foo Fighters have a documentary coming along which will coincide with the bands seventh studio album release this spring.

Foo Fighters: Back And Forth, chronicles 16 years of the Foo Fighters history, the formation, good times and rocky times for the band.

The film had its premiere here at the SXSW Film festival.

Iframe Embed for Youtube

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Exclusive Media Group’S Spitfire Pictures And RCA/Jive Announce Foo Fighters Feature-length Documentary

Film Theatrical Release Slated For Spring 2011

Directed by Academy Award winner James Moll

Produced By Spitfire Pictures

Co-Financed by Exclusive Media Group and RCA Records

To Have World Premiere at 2011 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX

Los Angeles, CA (February 1, 2011) – Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear a/k/a the Foo Fighters and Nigel Sinclair, Co-Chairman of Exclusive Media Group, announced today that Exclusive’s documentary film...

When The Levees Broke – A Requiem In Four Acts | Miles Davis: A Different Kind Of Blue | The Lock Up | Live Six Nations Rugby Union | Welcome To Romford | Law & Order

When The Levees Broke – A Requiem In Four Acts

9pm, Sky Atlantic

A welcome re-airing for Spike Lee's documentary about the flooding of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, to which the Us authorities' response was so casual, belated and inept as to make some suspect that the disaster's mostly poor African-American victims were being deliberately abandoned to their fate. Rather too much was made at the time of Lee supposedly encouraging the point of view that the levee had been dynamited, based on eyewitnesses talking of hearing a "boom". He did not. The charge of gross incompetence is damning enough and laid out here soberly and thoroughly. DS

Miles Davis: A Different Kind

Of Blue

12midnight, Sky Arts...

Ken Russell (right), a Best Director Academy Award nominee for Women in Love (1970), and Oscar-winning documentarian Murray Lerner (From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China) pose for the camera before the 35th anniversary screening of Russell’s Tommy. The 1975 rock opera (by The Who) starring Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, and Oliver Reed, was presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Friday, May 21, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Tommy also features Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jack Nicholson, and Tina Turner. In the movie, Daltrey plays [...]...

Ken Russell’s Tommy: Ann-Margret, Roger Daltrey (middle); Daltrey as the deaf/dumb/blind pinball-playing Jesus figure and his freak followers Ken Russell’s 1975 film from The Who’s rock opera Tommy, starring Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, and featuring the likes of Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jack Nicholson, and Tina Turner, will be screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tonight, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The screening will celebrate Tommy’s 35th anniversary. Documentarian Murray Lerner will host the event, which will feature a new Digital Cinema presentation with the original Quintophonic soundtrack. Following the screening, there’ll be an onstage panel discussion with writer-producer-director [...]...

Either you're a Leonard Cohen fan or you're not; there seems to be no middle ground. Which pretty much sums up who the audience is for Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight 1970. The film by director Murray Lerner is receiving a brief theatrical run in New York beginning today (1/22/10) but is also being released on DVD as part of a package with the CD of the same show. It's the epitome of narrowcasting: A single performance, fewer than a dozen songs, with little else onscreen beyond Cohen and his band. The camerawork is such that, though Cohen's intricate and insistent guitar-playing is heard, there's nary a shot that truly shows his hands during any of the musical performances. The sound is such that, while Cohen and his band are heard perfectly, the audience sounds like a small,...