OFS Cinemusic Presents: LEONARD COHEN: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970

Friday, January 20
OFS Cinemusic Presents
LEONARD COHEN: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970

On August 31, 1970, 35-year-old Leonard Cohen was awakened at 2 a.m. from a nap in his trailer and brought onstage to perform a spellbinding set at the third annual Isle Of Wight music festival. The audience of 600,000 was in a fiery and frenzied mood, after turning the festival into a political arena, trampling the fences, setting fire to structures and equipment, and stoked by the most incendiary performance of Jimi Hendrix’s career. As Cohen followed Hendrix’s set, onlookers (and fellow festival headliners) Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson, Judy Collins and others stood sidestage in awe as the Canadian Folk singer/songwriter and poet/novelist quietly tamed the crowd. The film is a fascinating and timely portrait of the artist as a young man, just three years into his recording career (though he was already a published poet and novelist for 15 years). As he mesmerizes the Isle of Wight audience, Cohen intersperses a baker’s dozen songs with tales both real and apocryphal, as well as a handful of his poems. Join us as we pay tribute to the late great Leonard Cohen.
Dir: Murray Lerner / 2009 / US / 64 min