“This film sheds light on how great Richie Havens, Gloria Steinem and Lady Bunny really are, plus Jewish Americans are the best talkers, period.”

–Jennifer Blowdryer

“Nancy Cohen brings us on her trip to celebrate love. Woodstock is only the setting. She don’t quit!”

–Hal Muskat

On the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, original attendee and filmmaker Nancy Cohen attempted “to get back to the garden” amidst a chaotic society that had fragmented into countless seekers attempting to attain transcendence through various pursuits. Among them are her fellow film directors, musicians and feminists, as well as Deadheads, drag queens, psychedelic philosophers, a rabbi, a water dowser, and freaks of all stripes. As satirist Paul Krassner notes at the end, “There’s all kinds of activity that you don’t see on the news — almost like an alternative value system developing and evolving while the old one is crumbling.” Cohen’s optimistic vision is of a Woodstock Festival removed from its static historical snapshot that continues to thrive in ways mass media doesn’t care to notice.

— Michael Simmons, MOJO, Huffington Post

Your film immerses you in the atmosphere of Woodstock from the first
frames. The use of newsreel videos contributes to this very much. We
also really like the camerawork style. It makes us feel as if we are
in the room with the characters. That is why Woodstock is open to
people who have never been to the festival. Thank you for your work
it’s really high level!

-Halo Film Festival

Woodstock, a Jewish Dream? Excerpted from Times of Israel
Imagine a Lollapalooza-like event of Biblical Times. Charismatic Moses shleps his people out of the desert…finally free from the shackles of slavery. What do people do when given the first breath of freedom? They party…and party they did. Apparently, they partied too much and with graven mages. Moses who had been dutifully receiving ethical instructions from Yahweh was enraged with this pagan behavior and shut the whole thing down. The first known incident of cancel culture.
The American summer of 1969 had many of the same elements. Young people freed up from the conformity of the fifties, rebellious expressions regarding military slavery for a wrong war, and manna from heaven, otherwise, known as the best marijuana east of Berkeley. All this along with the greatest rock and roll musicians of the time made for another iconic freedom moment …The Woodtstock Festival.
For this event, there was no one leader; Michael Lang initiated along with the help of Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts.
Each had a particular role; some more involved with the finances of the show. Their hope was that it could be profitable and would run for years. People already know as much about the history of the makings of Woodstock as they do the saga of 40 days in the desert, and I’m sure that Michael Lang, who is no longer with us, would say it was almost as complicated as guiding a bunch of ex slaves to the Promised Land.
This summer I’m releasing to festivals a small essay doc, Woodstock: A Snapshot in Time. The film is about my experience on going back to ‘The Garden’, with an eye on re-creating the same feelings I had experienced there as a young woman. This time I take along Andy, a Brit who had missed the whole mishigas by at least a generation. He had come up with an idea to make a film for British TV on the alumni of the festival and that’s how we found one other.
As someone who still feels that those three days imbedded a value in me, I did not think it would be possible to recreate the joy I experienced there. In many ways the whole thing was a terrific accident. Still, Andy was gung-ho to give it a try and I liked his accent.
In the film we interview philosopher-types, some political like Gloria Steinem, and others like Walter, my building’s super, who deeply believed that the time had come when we would all understand that we are really one.
For Kabbalist Rabbi Mayer Fund, the Woodstock generation was about everything that’s good in life… the music, the energy, and the people. Spoiler alert: His radical theory on who the Sixties generation really was is worth the price of admission alone.
As this is a piece of American cultural history, we asked the great Ken Burns’ narrator Peter (nee Cohan) Coyote to introduce the film. He is followed by the, brilliant late filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr. who was one of those folks “who almost got there.’
So, what’s Jewish about the film besides the three protagonists, Andy Lee, Howard Katzman and Nancy Cohen struggling to put up a tent and light a fire? I think it’s about the search…not for the Mashiach, but for the dream of finding a peaceful community; the revised garden of Eden where knowledge and compassion dwell in the same patch. Where we take care of each other and the earth together through peaceful actions.
In 1969 Max Yasgur leased his beautiful property in Bethel for what has now become a semi- sacred site. He must have understood something deep in his farmer’s soul when he made what must have been considered a questionable business decision. Afterward, when the festival was over, he simply said, “I think you people have proven something to the world.” And we did…and we can.
—

NEW REVIEW BY: Michael Haberfelner
Woodstock: A Snapshot in Time
USA 2022
produced by
Charles Lane, Nancy Cohen for Lambstar Productions
directed by Nancy Cohen
starring Nancy Cohen, Andy Lee, Robert Downey sr, Andrew Tatarsky, Bonzo Band, Janusz Gilewicz, Danny Goldberg, Julie Lee (II), Gloria Steinem, Meir Fund, Randy Cherkas, Eddie Izzard, Paul Krassner, Mike Golden, Mike Leigh, Kova Dauser, Forrest Greenleaf Grass, Viola Jordanoff Bowman, Richie Havens, Ramsey Clark, Terrence McKenna, Archie Cheechoo, Julie Holland, narration by Peter Coyote
written by Nancy Cohen

The original Woodstock in 1969 was always more than just a music festival but an event that helped to give a generation its identity. Consequently, both the film it spawned and its soundtrack have become instant classics. So it was really only a matter of time until the entertainment industry would pick up on that success, and bearing that in mind, it’s almost surprising that it has actually taken all of 25 years for a revival festival to occur. Of course, the world has turned quite a bit since 1969, and the chances of the new, corporate-run Woodstock music festival to be as iconic for its generation as the earlier one was were slim from the get-go. And on the basis of all of this, filmmakers Nancy Cohen and Andy Lee have set out to capture the mindset of this new flock of concert-goers, also in relation to audiences of the original Woodstock, and get and transmit a feel of the new Woodstock-spirit …

… and that’s exactly what this film is so good at. Sure, it shows next to nothing of the festival itself – but then there’s plenty of high gloss concert footage out there anyways – but features a fine compilation of unfiltered interviews from back in the day that are fortunately left untouched by hindsight from almost 30 years later and that thus serve as a nice document of a time, and of a generation that might not have had its “own” Woodstock in terms of iconography, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have or deserve a voice – a voice this documentary grants them quite successfully.