#92 - Message to Love

For those of you not in the know, I started a silly project a few years back when Meaghan went off to Bemidji State. The idea was to keep our Netflix queue occupied while she was gone, but not watch many (or any) movies that we were interested in. So to meet this end, I arbitarily picked a year (1997) and decided to watch as many of the movies from that year as I could in rough chronological order.

Needless to say, Meaghan has long since returned from the Great White North and the project has continued. To date, after nearly four years I have watched 91 movies as part of this endeavor and I'm only about halfway through February. It turns out there are a lot of films screened at the Sundance Film Festival. So many that after 30+ of them I decided to proceed with the chronology and go back to Sundance films when I feel like it.

Anyway, without further ado... #92 - Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival

What, you may ask, is a documentary about a music festival from 1970 doing in a list of 1997 movies? It apparently took 25+ years for the director to get enough funding to complete the film, but I'm glad he did.

Even just for the footage of the music, this movie is worth watching. Among many others, you get to see The Who (with Keith Moon), Jimi Hendrix (in his last major performance before dying), The Doors, Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez -- truly outstanding stuff. This was the last and largest of the big festivals (Woodstock, etc.) other than benefit concerts (Live Aid anyone?) up until the '90s when Lollapalooza was born. It was the last because it didn't make any money, despite 600,000 people being in attendance.

The film, as well as providing concert footage, focuses on the conflict between the artists, the promoters, and the concertgoers. You see, despite 600,000 people attending, only a mere 10% of that actually paid the £3 ticket price. The promoters lost money trying to pay all of the artists who appeared over the four day event. Many of the hippies, etc. who attended the festival thought that it should be free, so they all sat on a hill outside of the grounds where they could watch and listen to the music. The promoters built a fence to keep them from seeing, the mob tore the fence down, guard dogs were employed... crazy stuff. Interesting as all of this was, this movie was all about the music for me.

Next: #93 - David Lynch's Lost Highway
I've actually already watched this once, but want to view it again before attempting to write about it.