The Criterion Collection
Sneak Peeks
Dec 13, 2017 — Fifty years after the Summer of Love, Direct Cinema pioneer D. A. Pennebaker looks back on the Monterey International Pop Festival, which he captured in one of his greatest documentaries.
Sep 22, 2009 — 1967 was the year when a great divide opened between “pop” and “rock,” and when the burgeoning S.F. hippie subculture began to usurp the chirpier L.A. world of surf music and Sonny and Cher.
Nov 11, 2002 — A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.
Jan 25, 2018 — With the recent passing of Hugh Masekela, we’re looking back at the South African jazz luminary’s unforgettable performance in Monterey Pop.
Sep 18, 2019 — One Scene The way some rock fans talk about the sanctity of live music, you’d think it was a guaranteed path to transcendence. But of course most concerts fall far short of the sublime, and the thrill of breathing in...
Essays
Dec 21, 2017 — With D. A. Pennebaker’s groundbreaking concert film, rock music solidified its status as a universal language.
Sneak Peeks
Jun 15, 2012 — Not all of the amazing acts from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival—which is celebrating its forty-fifth anniversary this weekend—made it into the final cut of D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Monterey Pop. Among the casualties was Laura Nyro, who gave...
Nov 11, 2002 — Continued from Anatomy of a Love Festival - Part One The real turn-on, though, was the music—twenty-two hours of it, divided into solid chunks that usually ran more than thirty minutes. Friday night was the epitome of what San Francisco...
Sep 22, 2009 — Something very heavy happened at Monterey last weekend. Those very odd three days began in Friday’s cool gray air as the first of the crowd began to circle through the booths of the fairground. The only word for it then...
In Theaters
Jun 14, 2012 — Repertory PicksThe legendary Monterey International Pop Festival happened forty-five years ago this weekend. It featured one of the most amazing lineups ever—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, the Who, the Mamas & the Papas, Ravi Shankar, and so many more....