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For this week’s Hairy Harmonies, both films are musical (mostly the first, as it is a concert documentary), and hairy in that neither are fantastic films on their own, but both are interesting for historical reasons. They show a particular subset of adult and youth culture a few short months after Woodstock, so they are extremely dated, but in a good way. I’d initially planned something else, but watching Cassavetes’s Faces with y’all spurred me towards social commentary.

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Details

Celebration at Big Sur THIS HAS NO SUBTITLES
Featuring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, Dorothy Combs Morrison and The Combs Sisters, Mimi Fariña, Carol Ann Cisneros, Julie Payne, Chris Ethridge and The Struggle Mountain Resistance Band.

Celebration was held on the weekend of September 13–14, 1969, only one month after the famous and considerably larger Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which is referred to repeatedly. Celebration at Big Sur did not receive the same critical acclaim as the 1970 Woodstock film.

Co-Director/Cinematographer Wenzell Baird Bryant was well known in documentary circles for his hand-held ability to almost instantaneously capture live action as it was happening. Hired as the cameraman on Gimme Shelter, the Albert and David Maysles film of The Rolling Stones 1969 American Tour, Baird caught on camera the fatal stabbing of concertgoer Meredith Hunter by Hells Angels member Alan Passaro at the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969.

Co-Director Johanna Demetrakas followed this film up with Womanhouse, a documentary about the feminist art installation at Cal Arts. She went on direct several more films with the most recent being Feminists: What Were They Thinking? as well as working as a film editor.

Taking Off
Taking Off shared the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury ex aequo with Johnny Got His Gun at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. Howard Jacobson of The Guardian more recently enthused about loving it for 45 years as “a good film that waits for you to grow up emotionally”, showing not only “the older generation’s anger and confusion” but also “the sweet cruelty of being young”. It includes two future artists in brief appearances: Kathy Bates (listed as Bobo Bates in the credits) and Carly Simon, both as auditioning singers (note that Bates had already appeared in a soap opera, and Simon was singing professionally with various groups at this point, but had yet to get her own recording contract at the time of filming). Also look for Vincent Schiavelli, Ultra Violet, and Paul Benedict (Jeffersons, Seasame Street).

Content Warnings:

Celebration at Big Sur:
(listed but not reviewed for content on both imdb and dogdies):
from memory: cops and nude hippies

Taking Off:
Sex & Nudity: Moderate
Violence & Gore: None
Profanity: Moderate
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Severe (?)
Frightening & Intense Scenes: None
(listed but not reviewed for content on dogdies).

Track listings for each film:

Celebration at Big Sur

• “I Shall Be Released” – Joan Baez
• “Mobile Line” – John Sebastian with Stephen Stills
  • offstage
• “Song for David” – Joan Baez
  • shown rehearsing offstage, with stage performance of same song cut in
• “All of God’s Children Got Soul” – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters
• “Sea of Madness” – CSNY
• “4 + 20” – Stephen Stills solo performance
  • Stephen Stills introduces this number discussing his interaction with a heckler in the previous scene
• “Get Together” – Joni Mitchell with Crosby, Stills & Nash and John Sebastian
• “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters
  • incomplete: non-musical footage of nude sauna, audience happenings
• “Swing Down Sweet Chariot” – various (offstage, incomplete)
• “Rainbows All Over Yours Blues” – John Sebastian
• “Woodstock” – Joni Mitchell (playing piano)
  • non-musical footage of self-identified “freak” with Woodstock-themed bus
• “Red-Eye Express” – John Sebastian with Stephen Stills
• “Changes” – Mimi Fariña and Julie Payne with Stephen Stills (incomplete)
• “Malagueña Salerosa” – Carol Ann Cisneros
• “Rise, Shine, and Give God the Glory” – The Struggle Mountain Resistance Band (incomplete)
• “Down By the River” – CSNY
  • incomplete, over 7 minutes
  • folk musician improvising outside the festival
• “Sweet Sir Galahad” – Joan Baez
• “Oh Happy Day” – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters with Joan Baez
  • opens with Joan Baez rehearsing same number with Dorothy Combs Morrison

Taking Off (listing from movie’s soundtrack):

• “Taking off (I Believe in Love)” (Nina Hart) – 2:17
• “Fields of Green and Gold” – 1:40
• “Let’s Get a Little Sentimental/Sosaloosa” (Mike Leander/Eddie Seago) – 2:22
• “And Even the Horses Had Wings” (Kathy “Bobo” Bates) – 3:39
• “Long Term Physical Effects” (Carly Simon/ Tim Sauders) – 1:54
• “Ode to a Screw” sung by Mary(Jenifer)Mitchell (Tom Eyen/ Peter Cornell) – 1:35
• “Stabat Mater Opus 58” – 2:54
• “Lessons in Love” (Catherine Heriza) – 2:35
• “Nocturne” – 2:38
• “Goodbye, So Long” (Tina Turner/Ike Turner) – 3:07
• “Air” (Performed by The Incredible String Band, Composed by Mike Heron) – 3:10
• “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” – 1:50
• “Stranger in Paradise” – :49
• “Feeling Sort of Nice” (Shellen Lubin) – 1:59

Letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/film/celebration-at-big-sur/ https://letterboxd.com/film/taking-off/

Links to films:

Celebration at Big Sur (1969) 1:22:29
https://tankie.tube/w/cNssMypSGHQDNYjBnWCDEd
lower def version with auto-genertated subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STJdwZ5H3Yg

Einheitsfrontlied (1934) 0:03:26
https://tankie.tube/w/12rwbz9coPzPkWG5DoSQWJ

Taking Off (1971) 1:32:30
https://tankie.tube/w/gSeoNFzi3y7Xsn9ye8Jb7j