Woodstock (1970)

Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary concert film of the watershed counterculture Woodstock Festival which took place in August 1969 near Bethel, New York. The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh in his directorial debut. Seven editors are credited, including Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, and Wadleigh. Woodstock was a great commercial and critical success. It received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Schoonmaker was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing, a rare distinction for a documentary. Dan Wallin and L. A. Johnson were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound. The film was screened at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, but was not entered into the main competition. The 1970 theatrical release of the film ran 185 minutes. A director's cut spanning 224 minutes was released in 1994. Both cuts take liberties with the timeline of the festival. However, the opening and closing acts are the same in the film as they appeared on stage; Richie Havens opens the show and Jimi Hendrix closes it. In 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". An expanded 40th Anniversary Edition of Woodstock, released on June 9, 2009, in Blu-ray and DVD formats, features additional performances not before seen in the film, and it includes lengthened versions of existing performances, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival.