Felicity Beckett talks to co-director Sam Rice-Edwards about his new film, co-directed with Kevin McDonald, One To One: John & Yoko.
On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono.
Macdonald’s riveting documentary takes that legendary musical event and uses it as the starting point to explore eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States— living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television.
The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the screen: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons.
As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest — ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV.
Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO offers a bold new take on a seminal time in the lives of two of history’s most influential artists.
If you'd like to send us a voice memo for use in a future episode, please email
[email protected].
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow us on Spotify.
Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram with @picturehouses. Find our latest cinema listings at picturehouses.com.
Produced by Stripped Media.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe, rate, review and share with your friends. Vive le Cinema.
Netherlands