It was inevitable - how can you have a list of great documentaries without including the one that started them all? Woodstock is a documentary so legendary that a copy resides in the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress, considered as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, Woodstock is a music documentary of epic proportions, the full version weighing in at 330 minutes. It spans the entire duration of the festival and takes the viewer from one performance to another (sometimes playing loose with the timeline) while interviewing many of those involved in putting the festival on in addition to a number of the fans in attendance. The performances by the likes of Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who, Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix are captured with loving attention to detail, while the cutaways to the vast crowds of smiling people make the viewing experience all the more immersive, capturing the spirit of the time and the place with an authenticity that would become the benchmark of all concert documentaries to follow. Fully deserving of its Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Woodstock remains to this day not only a textbook example of how to do a music documentary right, but also a testament to the zeitgeist of the counterculture movement as it drew to its sad yet inevitable conclusion. What are your favourite music documentaries? Why not let us know in the comments below?
