The Beatles: Get Back - The Rooftop Concert Fri, Jun 30 | 7:30pm | DGT
LIMITED SERIES SUMMER OF MUSIC: CONCERT FILMS 1959-2020 JUN 10–AUG 26, 2023
Since the dawn of cinema, live musical performances have been captured on film. Among the first silent moving images there are dancers, musicians, and stage performers. Early sound cinema techniques also gravitated toward performance capture, though almost always stage-bound due to the limitations of early recording equipment. But as sound and camera technology evolved and grew lighter in weight and more amenable to location shooting, filmmakers gained more freedom to realize their cinematic visions. By mid-century, a new wave of direct, unvarnished documentary filmmaking crossed currents with the rising counterculture of music festivals and the concert film was born. This summer, the Academy Museum presents perhaps the first-ever retrospective of this magnificent hybrid form—musical spectacles with the high-wire immediacy of documentary. Spanning seven decades and several continents, genres, styles, and locations, Summer of Music ranges from dizzyingly eclectic festival bills to immersive single artist showcases, from crowd-pleasing classics to deep-cut discoveries. Beginning with Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959) and concluding with Metallica: Through the Never in 3D, Summer of Music will showcase the Beatles and Stones, Ozzfest, Beychella, and beyond. Let’s rock!
Please note: Many films in this series feature strobe lighting effects.
Programmed by Bernardo Rondeau. Notes by K.J. Relth-Miller and Bernardo Rondeau.
Jazz on a Summer’s Day Sat, Jun 10 | 7:30pm | DGT
Festival Fri, Jun 16 | 7:30pm | DGT
Inducted into the National Film Registry in 1999, Jazz on a Summer’s Day is widely considered the best jazz concert film ever made. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 1959, fashion photographer Bert Stern’s document of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival ushered in a wave of concert films in the late 1960s and into the ’70s, setting their tone of intimacy and establishing a sense of place vital to the immersive experience of any filmed musical event. With electric performances by Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, and Louis Armstrong, the summer’s day concludes with a moving set by Mahalia Jackson. DIRECTED BY: Bert Stern. WITH: Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Gerry Mulligan, Dinah Washington. 1959. 85 min. USA. Color. English. 4K DCP.
Years before the Summer of Love ushered in a new era of youth culture and hippie eccentricity, young audiences gathered in Newport’s windswept fields to listen to live guitar music, new and old, together. Documentarian Murray Lerner’s panoramic portrait of the Newport Folk Festival from 1963 and 1966 intersperses interviews with these idealistic, non- conforming audience members with riveting performances from a panoply of gospel, folk, and country artists: Joan Baez; Johnny Cash; Judy Collins; Donovan; Bob Dylan (both acoustic and electric); Fannie Lou Hamer; Howlin’ Wolf; Odetta; Peter, Paul and Mary; Buffy Sainte-Marie; Pete Seeger; and The Staple Singers. Nominated for a Documentary Feature Oscar, Festival brims with life and song. DIRECTED BY: Murray Lerner. WITH: Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash. 1967. 98 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
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