SELECTIVE RETROSPECTIVE 
When this film first burst upon the television screens in October 1968, it was met with incredulity and astonishment. Stuart Hood, a former Controller of Programmes at BBC Television, writing in The Spectator, said he had ‘no doubt that wherever the film is shown it will win professional acclaim. Remarkable for its virtuosity, its impact is inescapable.
No wonder it has been the subject of passionate argument in the corridors of the BBC for months.’ The Telegraph wrote that ‘It was absolutely chilling.’ The Observer: ‘It said more about pop music than a year of Top of the Pops.’ The New Statesman: ‘Brilliant and frightening.’ The Melody Maker dismissed the whole film as “pretentious rubbish”.
Violent and articulate, the film simply says that here was a group of astounding musicians – The Beatles, Hendrix, Cream, The Who, Donovan, Frank Zappa – who were also eloquent and had something important to say about the world in which we lived.
As John Lennon wrote to me, “We have smashed down the door of the BBC, and rock ‘n’ roll on television will never be the same again”.
- Tony Palmer
Warning: The music draws a direct line to the extraordinary violence of the late 1960s politics: Vietnam, assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, and some appalling images of death, murder and war crimes.
Tickets £8
10th May Day Pass (5 Films): £25 Only - applied automatically when you book all 5 films.
