Woodstock Diary 1969 (DVD), Wienerworld UK, Special Interests

Following the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, held August 15-17, 1969, documentary film director Michael Wadleigh culled a massive amount of footage that he and a team of camera operators had shot To create the three-hour Woodstock. In 1994, To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the festival, Wadleigh went back To the film vault and re-edited his movie, adding another 40 minutes for a version released on home video as the "director's cut." At the same time, documentary film director D.A. Pennebaker (who had made another famous movie drawn from a rock festival, Monterey Pop) and his partner Chris Hegedus seem To have been given access To the same film vault To create Woodstock Diary, three one-hour programs that, in essence, present an alternate take on the material. This DVD, released To coincide with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, combines the three shows on one disc. Each one covers a single day of the festival (extending past sunrise of the following day, that is), making Woodstock Diary a more chronological version than Woodstock. Also, Pennebaker and Hegedus did new interviews with the producers of the festival, Michael Lang, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman, and a few others To give a fuller sense of the planning and the backstage machinations, which in some cases were quite dramatic. The chief draw, of course, remains the music, and there is plenty of that. Pennebaker and Hegedus use some of the same performances that appeared in Woodstock, although they are edited differently. Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" and Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home" are noticeably shorter, for example. The new directors do not re-create Wadleigh's double- and triple-screen effects, which makes sense if these programs were intended for television and video instead of movie theaters. As with Wadleigh's director's cut, performers who were not included in the original film, such as Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, are seen here. So are several who didn't even make the director's cut, such as Bert Sommer and Tim Hardin. (Also included, albeit only briefly, are the Incredible String Band and Quill. Other artists who performed at Woodstock, such as Melanie and Sweetwater, remain missing.) Although Pennebaker did not shoot at Woodstock himself, his proclivities come out in the way he and Hegedus present the footage. The director who treated Jefferson Airplane in Monterey Pop as if it was Grace Slick and a backup band (she is seen in close-up even when someone else is singing) does exactly the same thing here, choosing Slick's two showcase numbers, "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit," and lingering over her in her white outfit at the expense of her bandmates. (Of course, considering that guitarist Jorma Kaukonen is wearing a swastika necklace, maybe that's just as well.) That's a minor complaint, however. Woodstock Diary, while not as spectacular as Woodstock, in some ways presents a more coherent sense of the event, and it is full of terrific musical performances. Even those who plumped for the Woodstock "ultimate collector's edition" box set will find there is more To see, hear, and learn about Woodstock from this DVD. (BTW: skip the "artist bios" special feature, which contains typos and factual errors.) ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi