Festival Express

In 1970, ambitious promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton assembled a post-Woodstock event for Canada, a two-day festival of some of the hottest rock and blues artists of the day, including Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Band, and Buddy Guy. Due to legal and political reasons, the documentation of this landmark, three-city tour, which traveled from Toronto to Calgary by train, was kept from being released until last year. To add another layer to this striking time capsule, director Robert Smeaton (The Beatles Anthology) interspersed more recent interviews with participants, allowing Festival Express to re-capture a long-lost era while offering new insight into it. The event itself was quite extraordinary, and the film works both as nostalgia and as a history lesson. The Festival Express 1970 train rolled along with musicians who were high on music and altered substances. Where else could one witness Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and The Band’s Rick Danko jamming together? Behind the scenes drama adds to the mystique. Despite good attendance, Walker took a financial bath with the lavish expense of the train trips, but he maintained his optimism and idealism and gave the musicians the party of a lifetime. Another engrossing subplot was the small but significant protests outside each event. While tens of thousands of fans paid $14 to see the shows, a few thousand (along with the mayor of Calgary) protested the price and demanded the shows be free. It was an ironic precursor to the current controversy over music downloading and makes one realize that musicians are still, decades later, fighting for the right (and the support) to make money off of their art. –Bryan Reesman

Aug 6-12
FRI 2:30 4:40 7:15 9:45
SAT–TUES 2:30 4:40 7:15 9:10
WED 2:30 4:40
THURS 2:30 4:40 7:15 9:10

Friday @ 7:15pm, Rob Leonard, Original Lead Singer & Co-founder of Sha Na Na