“The group's ‘transes’ are our equivalent of ‘soul music’, our irrationality,” said Ahmed El Maanouni, the director of this extraordinary documentary about Nass El Ghiwane, the legendary band known as “the Rolling Stones of Africa.” “I followed the example of Nass El Ghiwane themselves: I went back to the roots. They draw their music from the last thousand years of Moroccan and African history. The film sets out to reveal and emphasize this heritage.” Nass El Ghiwane began in the late ‘60s, and with their unique mix of poetry, music and theater, they returned to the origins of Moroccan culture and forged a nearly direct communication with their audience. As Martin Scorsese, long an admirer of Maanouni’s film and the band’s music, put it, “Nass El Ghiwane was singing their nation, their people––their beliefs, their sufferings, their prayers.” A sensation at the 1981 New York Film Festival, we’re happy to be presenting this newly restored print of Transes, thanks to the newly formed World Cinema Foundation.
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Fri Nov 23: 2:45 & 6:30
Sat Nov 24: 1, 4:45 & 8:30
Sun Nov 25: 3:10 & 6:45
Mon Nov 26: 1, 4:45 & 8:30
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Throughout the ‘60s, the Newport Folk Festival was one of the era’s most reliable barometers of the changes beginning to rock American society. And at the center of those changes was a rail-thin singer hailing from Hibbing, Minnesota, by way of Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan. Filmmaker Murray Lerner was there too, and he powerfully captured both the spirit of Newport as well as the extraordinary music produced there in his woefully neglected film Festival. Now Lerner has gone back to his footage and created a revealing portrait of the young Dylan during the crucial period of 1963-65, grow progressively darker and more withdrawn as he and his band take their first steps towards rock and roll in 1965. The film features Dylan singing stirring versions of many of his most famous songs, as well as some of his legendary duets with Joan Baez.
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Fri Nov 23: 1, 4:45 & 8:30
Sat Nov 24: 3 & 6:45
Sun Nov 25: 1:30, 5:00 & 8:40
Mon Nov 26: 3:00 & 6:45
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