Coming to NYC’s Bronx Documentary Center tomorrow, Thursday, August 7: GIMME SHELTER
Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin’s chronicle of the Rolling Stones’ infamous 1969 concert tour debuted in 1970, and went on to Cannes the following year. It screens as part of the BDC’s series, The ’60s: Decade of Change, with Albert Maysles, a recent recipient of the National Medal of Arts, in attendance.
What began as a Direct Cinema portrait of the popular rock band became a disturbing record of a notorious concert, the free Altamont Speedway show on December 6, 1969, recognized by some as “the day the Sixties died.” Acknowledging the violence that marked that event, which culminated in the stabbing death of an African American student attendee by a Hell’s Angel turned semi-official security guard, the film alternates on-the-road and performance footage with scenes of the band watching the latter, with particular attention paid to the hastily thrown together free concert that ended the tour, from scene-stealing attorney negotiations for the SF venue to the reactions of organizers and performers to the many incidents that preceded the fatal stabbing. In contrast to the free-flowing peace and love that characterized the concert’s East Coast forebear Woodstock, a palpable tension hangs over Altamont, turning individual fans into a scary crowd, which no appeal from either Grace Slick or Mick Jagger can hope to soothe. It’s gripping cinema, an indelible profile less of a band than of the influence of their music on a generation, and a precursor to the turmoil that was to follow.
what (not) to doc 