Don Gibson Theater: Film Weekend - Gimme Shelter

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH AT 7:00PM

Called by many the "Greatest Rock Film Ever Made," this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 tour of the United States when 300,000 members of the Love Generation collide with a few dozen Hell's Angels at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway. Direct cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles immortalize on film the bloody slash that transforms a decade's dreams into disillusion. Great music, great band... and the most criminally irresponsible event management in history.

THE BBC said...
This film is unsettling... The strength of the subject matter is that this was real. It happened. Yet fate used a dramatic device. The Set-Up: early shots of secure press conferences with rock stars cocksure and glib. The Payoff: rock stars unprotected and out of their element. Out of control and out of their hands. As they found out that night the United States is a very big place and not every subculture had embraced them.

AMAZON said...
To cite Gimme Shelter as the as the greatest rock documentary ever made is to damn it with faint praise... Rock's equivalent of the Zapruder film... Along the way we glimpse the folly of the machinations behind the concert, the insularity of life on the concert trail and the superstars' own shell-shocked loss of innocence.

DVD REVIEW said...
The concert footage shows the Stones at their most remarkable, with the entire band pouring out some of their classic songs with energy and intensity.

CHRISTIAN SPOTLIGHT ON ENTERTAINMENT said...
A seminal film... An important film... Gimme Shelter holds up well because it reveals truths that are too often ignored... The film is a brilliant technical accomplishment because each element on the tour had to be a surprise. The unpredictable performing schedule, the disastrous events at Altamont, and the shock of catching a murder on film while expecting to photograph a placid Woodstock-like audience... To put this all together, to compile a work that excels as a concert film and a searing cautionary tale is a remarkable achievement.