Perhaps the most fascinating vintage footage...depicts what happened in 1961 when the city sent police into Washington Square Park to stop the longtime Sunday practice of singing without a required permit.
Evokes the flavor of the era just before the music business exploded into a mass-market juggernaut. The film's pleasures are the same ones offered by a sprawling, lavishly illustrated magazine spread.
A most enjoyable flashback. Laura Archibald's documentary about Ground Zero for the 1960s folk explosion -- and its enormous influence on the shape of rock music to come -- isn't assembled in a particularly distinctive manner, but the materials and voices culled offer more than enough reward in themselves.
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Slant MagazineChuck Bowen
Slant MagazineChuck Bowen
Director Laura Archibald's approach is fatally safe, often turning poets into self-congratulatory windbags.