A pair of Beatles-related movies will have the world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. The event is scheduled to run from August 28 through September 7 in Venice, Italy.
One film is the recently reported documentary One to One: John & Yoko, which focuses on John Lennon and wife Yoko Ono’s life in New York City during the turbulent year of 1972. The other movie, TWST – Things We Said Today, is a partly factual film that looks at events surrounding The Beatles’ historic 1965 concert at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York.
[RELATED: New John Lennon & Yoko One Documentary One to One to Feature Footage from Historic 1972 Concerts at Madison Square Garden]
Both movies have been chosen to be shown as part of the festival’s “Out of Competition” category.
Initial details about One to One: John & Yoko were announced in May. The documentary was made with the cooperation of Lennon’s family. It was co-directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald and movie editor Sam Rice-Edwards.
The doc’s centerpiece is Lennon’s One to One Concerts, which took place on August 30, 1972, at Madison Square Garden. The two shows were the only full-length performances Lennon ever gave after the breakup of The Beatles. John was accompanied at these concerts by Yoko, The Plastic Ono Band, Elephant’s Memory, and some special guests.
The documentary will feature fully restored footage of the One to One shows, with newly remixed audio produced by John and Yoko’s son, Sean Ono Lennon. The film also boasts previously unseen video and unheard audio from Lennon’s archives.
TWST – Things We Said Today is a long-in-the-works movie written and directed by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujica, who began the project in 2012.
According to a profile of the film posted at RomaniaJournal.ro, it was “conceived as a time capsule of the weekend of August 13-15, 1965,” when The Beatles visited New York City for their famous first concert at Shea Stadium. The story is told from the perspective of two real-life people who were teenagers in 1965: Geoffrey O’Brien, whose father, Joe, was a popular radio DJ at the time; and Judith Kristen, a well-known Beatles fan who attended the Shea Stadium concert and many other Fab Four shows.
O’Brien and Kristen appear as semi-animated characters in the film that are voiced by two young actors. To tell the story, the animated characters are incorporated into real archival footage dating from 1965.
Ujica’s script includes information taken from Kristen’s diary, and excerpts from partly factual recollections from O’Brien.
After its Venice film fest premiere, Things We Said Today will be released in Romanian theaters in early 2025.
More About the Venice Film Festival
The festival will kick off on August 28 with a premiere screening of the new Beetlejuice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
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