Venice Film Festival 2025: Review movie Newport & the Great Folk Dream

Folk music's silent rebellion explodes at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. The private lives of singers begin to emerge in their songs, with verses that tell of shoes worn by Black travelers, or the desire to escape one's home. It is Bob Dylan who transforms the festival, demonstrating that another form of storytelling about one's condition was possible, finding melody in the sounds of accordions, methodically vibrated guitars, and deliberately enunciated words. 

Joan Baez begins to perform, as does Pete Seeger, alongside banjo players from coal country, gospel artists from Georgia, and fishermen from Canadian villages. The festival becomes a means of socialization: Robert Gordon's film "Newport & the Great Folk Dream" perfectly captures this transformation, which passes through the assassination of President John Kennedy and is ferried toward the Vietnam War. The songs speak of soldiers on the front lines, of submission, and the audience finds itself immersed in the festival.

The film benefits from the presence of iconic songs, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man": "I have nowhere to go / hey mister tambourine man / play a song for me / in the jingle jangle morning / I'll come following you." From artists like José Feliciano to Odetta, from the Freedom Singers quartet with their invocation of civil rights to The Weavers. Baez sings "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River"; "I've got a home on the other side / We are crossing Jordan river, I want my crown / When I get to heaven / I'll sit down," and after her performance, she secures a contract with Vanguard Records. Folk music becomes that element of protest that The Beatles couldn't shape, so much so that the divisions between folk and them were clear, as they were with rock. Here, elders shared songs and techniques, young people innovated and pushed beyond limits, and alongside the big names performs a player of homemade pan flute.

The footage presented covers the years from 1963 to 1966, documenting the rapidity of change. "Blowin' In the Wind" was born then: "And how many times must the cannonballs fly / before they're forever banned? / the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the win". The film brings that era to life, not merely nostalgic but furious and rebellious, in a way that today we can only wistfully imagine.