Jul. 23, 2021|United States|110 Min.
Genre: Documentary
Description: Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage – 2021 Full Movie in English 720p
Storyline: It’s somewhat surprising that it took so long for a documentary about the 1999 Woodstock music festival to be produced. This event was an epic, defining disaster that deserved more attention than, say, the Fyre Festival of 2017, which failed before it even began yet already inspired two films about it.
Garret Price’s HBO documentary “Woodstock 99” effectively captures a chaotic cultural moment. The first installment in a series by Bill Simmons, the film is subtitled “Peace, Love, and Rage,” though peace and love were notably absent during those scorching July days 22 years ago. Instead, the festival devolved into a nightmare of overflowing portable toilets, hungry and thirsty attendees, horrific sexual assaults, arson, and even deaths.
The footage is shocking, particularly scenes of women being harassed and crowds of young men spiraling into aggression, stupidity, and misogyny. The documentary portrays this as the emergence of an angry demographic, and it’s deeply unsettling.
Price places the festival in context, linking it to a time of economic growth overshadowed by societal unease: Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the Columbine High School shootings occurred earlier that year, and Y2K fears were growing. The film includes testimonies from attendees and journalists, along with (too brief) clips of live performances, often feeling rushed. It could have easily been longer.
Like most post-mortems, “Woodstock 99” seeks to explain how everything went wrong. It identifies a deadly mix of factors: a harsh environment, poorly planned programming (with only three female acts contrasted against aggressive headliners like Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn, and Metallica), and logistical failures. The high cost of water bottles, priced at $4, is frequently mentioned. One promoter, John Scher, dismissively remarks, “This was not a poor man’s festival.”
Cast director: Garret Price
Cast actor: Michael Lang, John Scher, Wesley Morris, Maureen Callahan, Steven Hyden, Black Thought, Jonathan Davis, Moby, Jewel, Scott Stapp
Original name: Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage