Music DVDs

DA PENNEBAKER, Woodstock Diary 1969

The blueprint of the mega- music festivals was drawn 40 years ago, when the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair rolled into the small town of Bethel. While director Mike Wadleigh filmed the three-day event, other film-makers such as DA Pennebaker wanted to delve behind the myth, which is why Woodstock Diary 1969(first released in 2002, but updated and reissued in time for the 40th anniversary) is far more cogent and interesting than the original movie. It isn't all perfect, however: aside from the onstage footage of The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat and Arlo Guthrie, there are inadequate elements such as few captions for the interviews and lacklustre band biogs. When it's good, however, it's great: interviews with the organisers show that despite being utterly ill-prepared, their sense of hippie-can-do attitude more or less won the day.