The Rockumentaries, Direct Cinema, and the Politics of the 1960s

Abstract

Monterey Pop (1968), Woodstock (1970), and Gimme Shelter (1970) are all examples of what has become known as the first wave of the rockumentary, nonfiction films that document rock musicians and musical events using the observational methods associated with direct cinema. Yet, in documenting the multi-act rock festivals that were regarded as significant events within the 1960s American counterculture, the rockumentaries clearly depart from core direct cinema methods and philosophies. They do so in a number of ways; in their largely macro-political focus, their use of interviews, their employment of non-diegetic soundtrack music, and, in Monterey Pop and Woodstock, their movement away from the key concept of the backstage, in the process considerably reducing the possibility of the spontaneous, unscripted moment that represented the ultimate goal for direct cinema. Ultimately, the evidence of the festival rockumentaries suggests a mismatch of methodology and subject matter, with the sheer size and scale of the rock festivals making it difficult to continue direct cinema’s original micro-political focus. The closeness of the filmmakers’ identification with their musical subject matter also creates difficulties, with the 1960s counterculture becoming more and more commercialized and what had originally been oppositional music quickly co-opted by the major music labels. Furthermore, the extent of rockumentaries’ departure from direct cinema’s methods and philosophies also suggests a distancing from the movement’s original democratizing impulse and increasingly into the service of media spectacle, eventually providing the common ground for countercultural and mass commodity cultural convergence.