Spirit of '71

Thankyou everyone for your incredible generosity!  We've hit our target!  Whatever we raise over this goal will still be very useful so please keep passing on the word about the project and become a backer if you haven't already! 

What is this film about?

This film tells the stranger than fiction story behind the first Glastonbury Fair of 1971. It follows the journey of the original festival organiser Andrew Kerr, through the wild chain of events which brought music, art, theatre, poetry, and naked dancing to a small Somerset village called Pilton.

Picking up the story 40 years later, we follow Andrew as he orchestrates an anniversary stage - the Spirit of '71, inside the city sized Glastonbury Festival of 2011.

What stage is this project at?

For the past 2 years, we have been following Andrew, and interviewing various characters from the 1971 festival including musicians, performers and attendees. We already have over 50 hours of material, including a lot of material shot on super 8 (cine film), much of which we have yet to get developed because of the costs involved.

We have been funding this work so far ourselves, but we are now at the stage where we need your help.  This injection of funds will allow us to turn the project from a passion project into a feature length documentary film which we believe has got the story, material and legs to be a true success story.

The money raised will allow us to develop film stock, shoot reconstruction scenes of memories with actors, fund the various trips to do the interviews that remain to be filmed and help with other production costs.  We want to stay independent, and that's why we need your help to fund the project into a state where we can get a distributor interested.

Background

In 1971, Andrew Kerr wanted to celebrate midsummer with a free festival of artistic expression, likened to a small medieval affair. Disgusted by the growing tide of commercialism cashing in on the hippie ideals of the 1960s, Andrew’s vision was to inspire a generation to seek harmony with the earth and spiritual enlightenment free from any profit motive.

Together with Arabella Churchill and a small group of late 1960s hipsters Andrew rented a small Somerset farm from a young farmer named Michael Eavis. Unknown to them at the time, together they were creating the template for the biggest green fields cultural festival on the planet.

Glastonbury's evolution from small summer fair to the biggest show on the earth is one which attracts much debate. Everybody has an opinion. This film gives voice to those who were there at the start, riding the crest of the hippie wave which broke in Somerset forty years ago. Together they take us back to go in search of the spirit which originally bound them together. This is their story.

This is an inspiring history of peace and love and how a small group of motivated drop-outs pulled together the pilot for defining counter cultural festival of modern times.  This is rock, this is roll. This is love, this is peace. This is back when it was cool to be spiritual. This is drugs, this is rebellion, this is culture. This is counter culture. These were the people in the driving seat. This is the Spirit of ‘71.

How are we making this film?

Where the best rockumentary films end, this film begins. Our plan is to stitch together a wealth of archive material (some of which has never been seen before) and primary source documents from the time with photos, interviews, an amazing soundtrack and some stranger than fiction dramatic reconstruction work.

To us the Spirit of '71 is something which demands a fresh approach to story telling. The wealth of material we have dug up offers a fascinating glimpse into how a group of free loving hippies put together the iconic festival of the 1970s. There is far too much to fit in a film so we are planning to make the archive available through some interesting digital extras to download to your iPads and such in order to drill down deeper into the story.

About the Directors

Directing duo Michael Watts and David McNulty have been working together creatively since they were 11 years old. Many years later, albeit not at all grown up, they continue their relationship of creative synergy.

With a background in research and fine art, Michael completed an MA in Documentary Film Making in 2010. Now a full time independent filmmaker Michael's multi-award winning human rights film Laguna Negra continues to be a welcome addition to many festival line-ups.  Michael's work has often taken him to South America - they both recently came back from Peru shooting a Sponsume funded feature documentary, Undermining Justice.

David started off in the world of film post production, learning the finer technicalities of the film making craft. After some time spent working in advertising on award winning digital cross platform projects, David moved to become a full time filmmaker working on some notable interactive projects, virals and pop promos.

Both are committed die-hard story tellers with two complementary skill sets. They are also both very unconventional in the way they see the world. Now, this unconventional story has found them.