——Inscription
In 1969, the United States was shrouded in the dull atmosphere of the Vietnam War. 550,000 American soldiers were sent to the Vietnam battlefield. In 1969, an average of 800 soldiers were killed every month; The war has thrown America into a frenzy. Most Americans are in a state of distress, doubt, anger and dissatisfaction, especially among young people. In stark contrast to this is the innocent faces and joyful scenes I saw in the documentary "1969 Woodstock" of these young people gathered at the Woodstock music festival in suburban New York. They gave up their suave demeanor and disciplined education to swing wildly to rock music on the muddy grass in the pouring rain. They play, play, daze, meditate; they sing, dance, take drugs, and do performance art... In this way, they express and vent their disgust for war, laugh at and despise hypocritical politics and banal culture.
"1969 Woodstock" directed by Michael Wadley used more than three hours to record the three-day counter-cultural movement with the theme of "Love and Peace" that took place on the farm in August 1969- The most famous music festival in history: Woodstock.
Today, China's music festival culture has gradually grown and popularized from a niche and marginal culture. As a form of business and entertainment, more and more people participate in it and enjoy the joy of freedom and release. However, few people know that as the originator and milestone of the music festival, the face and history of the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 gave it more meaning. It records a historical song written by the young hippies in the late 1960s who advocated "love and peace" in the historical process of American society with their lives and souls, a real utopia built by music as a bridge.
"We expected 50,000 people to come every day, and it turned out to be a million people. I was hungry for two whole days because we couldn't go out and buy food, so I had to eat cornflakes. These kids are very good. They always It's 'sir' this, 'sir' that, 'thank' this, 'thank' that. No one can complain about these kids. This festival is too big for the world. Nothing ever happens like this This is the beginning of
the documentary "Woodstock 1969", and a local old man is being interviewed by the film crew. And in the months leading up to the festival, the residents there viewed the upcoming young people as a scourge, and strongly opposed the festival—just as I did before the movie. However, when I saw the first band on stage with their guitars in their hands and hundreds of thousands of people cheering and boiling, my nerves couldn't control my tear ducts.
It's hard to imagine that a music festival organized by only four people and held in a remote outskirts of the country has such a powerful force, attracting millions of people to drive from all over the country. This is the power of music, the power of the ideal of "love and peace" enshrined in music, and the power of the soul. 450,000 people gathered around the stage and on the grass in the town, singing and dancing, and a million people were stuck on their way to the festival - because of the traffic jam, the organizers had to use helicopters to pick up the bands and performers. part of the audience. In the picture, you can see from the aerial photography that tens of thousands of cars of all kinds are parked and jammed on every piece of land and every road in the town, and the scene of boiling crowds makes people unable to calm down for a long time.
It is even more difficult to imagine that, under such circumstances, in a small town with millions of people, in the Woodstock music festival where the hippie culture is permeated and there is no police, there has been no violence for 3 days. As the organizer said excitedly at the music festival: "This is not the end, this is just the beginning. There is no police here, there is no situation, there is only love and peace. This generation and such a culture are far different from that The old generation and their culture. No police officers, no guns, no clubs, no fighting. Everyone joins hands and helps each other. This worked when we were here, and it will continue, no matter what happens What. When people go back to their cities, this kind of thing happens all the time."
In this age of confusion and dissatisfaction, on the grass with harsh conditions, people never complain about heavy rain, mud, hunger, or simplicity, they can use any form of pleasure - including ubiquitous sex and drugs, Strangers befriend each other and express their purest ideals: love and peace. "These conditions didn't affect me and my friends. We were enjoying the music to the fullest, staying high and making new friends. That's the second revelation Woodstock gave us - here In a group of hallucinating young people, strangers can quickly become friends, and everyone can get along like brothers and sisters. You can feel the close friendship and the collective charisma. That kind of fraternity is probably what I miss most about the late '60s," as one participant said in a later interview.
Regarding artistic techniques, the most successful part of the film is that for a complex and chaotic music festival with atmosphere and spirit as the soul, director Wadleigh has truly restored everything at that time and place through film, so that all audiences no matter what era or film they are in. The land can be immersed in the scene, and it can be infected with emotions and tears. According to my estimation, the proportion of music performances in the film is about 60%, and the proportion of people and scenes is controlled at 40%, I think this state is just right.
In the documentary, Wadleigh repeatedly uses a multi-screen approach to reflect all aspects of the festival from different perspectives. Details such as peace, human rights, generation gap, and the relationship between man and nature are captured by the camera and presented to us one by one. In the film, there are always two pictures with left and right divisions narrating at the same time. Sometimes there are close-ups of characters on one side, and a distant view of the audience on the other; sometimes the different details and states of several musicians during a band’s performance are also presented separately. Such multiple screens sometimes complement each other and sometimes contrast each other, making the whole film fuller.
The director also quietly expressed many metaphorical meanings as a bystander. For example, those who did not buy tickets stepped through the barbed wire to enter the venue to symbolize breaking the barriers, those people of different skin colors gathered together mean equality and fraternity, and The youthful willfulness of sliding on the muddy red soil, the magnanimous innocence of bathing in the river water. Men, women, adults, children, whites, blacks...the shadows of their arbitrary dance flow freely under the dark blue sky of the evening. You can feel the purest beauty and joy from this picture. Especially in the clip of John Sebastian singing "The Younger Generation" who was accidentally pulled to the stage to save the scene, the camera is aimed at the young children who were brought to the music festival by the hippie parents, with golden curly hair and timid simplicity. The eyes, the fat bulging bodies running all over the floor, watching them play with their musical instruments curiously, really resembled the angels in the painting of the Virgin. The director clearly pinned his hopes on the younger generation - I hope the shadow of war does not repeat the same mistakes in them.
The film was released in 1970 and won the 1971 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, as well as nominations for Best Editing and Best Sound. As rock and roll evolved and the age and intellectual structure of those who listened to it changed, rock music was also rapidly degenerating. So after 1969 Woodstock, we don't see rock music documentaries like this anymore, and music festivals like this disappear with them. Utopia is Utopia after all, it lacks all kinds of realistic considerations and supports, and cannot last in a long and healthy manner. However, it is still the best carrier for people to escape from reality and ugliness, and to pin their ideals, love and peace.
Feldman, a historian in the town of Woodstock, once put it this way: "What people experience here is an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime event, complex and impossible to replicate." In the ensuing decade In 2008, Woodstock gradually faded out of the art arena, but it has since become a spiritual sanctuary for the counterculture. Although two decades later Woodstock's last two music festivals have been unable to find hippie culture, and music festivals large and small all over the world have become part of entertainment and business culture, countless young people still can Find their ideal utopia and eternal spiritual guidance from these exciting images of 69 years.
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