My Review of Festival (1967) directed by Murray Lerner

 This documentary/concert film marks the beginning of the era of Baby-Boomer concert film genre that ran into the mid-70s. This film shows the genesis of the popular image of the counterculture movement in the United States. It is based around the Newport Folk Festival between the years of 1963-1966. You have an assorted mix of Upper-Class New Englanders, Left-wing intellectuals, hipsters, and the beginning of the more drug-induced spin-off of the hipsters: the hippies. The editing of this film by Howard Alk points the way to the more extreme-styles of the Monterey Pop film of the following year, but we are not all the way there yet. It does give you a diverse, if uneven, sample of the music of the folk scene of the mid-1960s.

This may be one of the most diverse festival films—musically—of the era as you get not only "folk" music, but the Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, folk-rock and all the subgenres of those styles that were around at the time. I can appreciate that it had something for everyone and musicians who would not interact with each other anywhere else would meet at Newport, Rhode Island. Yes, a certain eccentric Minnesotan was the star attraction during this era in folk circles, but the film does try to balance him out and share equal time to performers who obvious were not as famous or worshipped. While this film can get lost after the concert films that came after it—it still is an interesting watch as a time capsule or as look at how much more political these functions were before the LSD started flowing.