Monterey Pop

The summer of 1967, California. A three day music festival is held at Monterey. Many groups take the stage and most had not reached a wide audience until then. The film gives the preparation, the crowd and the stage recordings together. Between them people in the audience are spoken to; nobody knows what the festival will be and the organisation runs largely by trial and error. D. A. Pennebaker directs. The documentary dates from 1968. The method is direct cinema; no narration, no explanation, and the camera follows the event. Several cameras were used and the sound was recorded separately; a concert recording at that level was new for the period. Its most cited sections are a few of the performances; a guitar set alight and a long passage given to Indian music make the film's close. The festival is also a record of the cultural climate of that year; the clothes, the crowd and the bearing are directly visible. The production set the form of later concert films and is counted a beginning for the genre. Its limit is structure; the documentary gives no context and does not say who anyone is. Who it is for: anyone curious about the history of music and the culture of the sixties. Who it is not for: there is no narrative, no information is given, and the sound carries the limits of its time.