REWIND Classics Series Screening
1h 36m / Not Rated / Documentary, Music
Bob Dylan emerged from the folk music scene of early ‘60s New York, joining the burgeoning revival just in time to blow it up completely. Entire careers in music scholarship consist of nothing more than documenting the span between 1962 (when he, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, changed his name) and 1963, when Peter, Paul & Mary’s cover of Blowin’ In the Wind threw him into the spotlight. And that span might not even make the top three in a list of most interesting years in Bob Dylan’s life. Unless you were there (hi Patt), it’s hard to understand the speed and intensity of Dylan’s rise.
Making a film like Dont Look Back even more important as a document not just of the musician himself, but of the time and place we find him. Over the course of just eleven days in 1965, documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker followed Dylan through his first tour overseas, playing eight shows in England. Notably, this is about two months before his seemingly apocalyptic move to playing electric guitar. Through Pennebaker’s lens, Dont Look Back is a radically conceived portrait of an American icon that has influenced decades of vérité behind-the-scenes documentaries.