BUY TICKETS HERE
Join us at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 30, for a rare screening of “Monterey Pop,” director D.A. Pennebaker’s iconic documentary about the greatest pre-Woodstock rock and roll festival of all time.
MONTEREY POP | 1968 | DIRECTOR: D.A. Pennebaker | WITH: Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Mamas and the Papas, Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon, Ravi Shankar, The Who | RUNNING TIME: 1H 18M | UNRATED | 4K RESTORATION
On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the beginning of the Summer of Love, the first Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey featured career-making performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but they were just a few among a wildly diverse cast that included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, the Byrds, Hugh Masekela, and the extraordinary Ravi Shankar. With his characteristic vérité style, D. A. Pennebaker captured it all, immortalizing moments that have become legend: Pete Townshend destroying his guitar, Jimi Hendrix burning his.
“Fifty years on, what ‘Monterey Pop’ offers contemporary audiences is a powerful reminder of a largely absent world, a glimpse into an era that begat one of the last collective gasps of romantic utopianism of our time. Myths tell of things that never were but always are. “Monterey Pop” captures icons who certainly were, but who also exist for us, like their predecessors from antiquity, in the ethereal eternity of our collective mythology.
“Pennebaker’s film has never looked or sounded as dynamic and shockingly modern as it does in this fiftieth-anniversary restoration. At moments, Hendrix, Redding, and Joplin seem to be performing from a place beyond their own ability, their talent and questing spirit buoyed by the era. For as long as we revisit Monterey Pop, these figures, like constellations, remain brilliantly alive for us beyond their own small purchase of time.” Michael Chaiken
Tickets are $6 (including service charge) and available at link above. Students use code UMSTUDENT at checkout for free admission (must show Cane card at the door).
