Woodstock is a 1970 documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel in New York. The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and was edited by (amongst others) Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker; Schoonmaker was nominated for an Academy Award for Film Editing. It received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, as well as a nomination for Best Sound. The film was also screened at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition. The Official Director's Cut, spanning 225 minutes, was released in 1994.
Both cuts take liberties with the timeline of the festival. However, the opening and closing acts are the same in the film as in real life, i.e., Richie Havens opens the show and (much later) Jimi Hendrix closes it.
Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock's performance was released separately on DVD.
VH1 Classic occasionally airs the Director's Cut version of the documentary. In 1996, Woodstock was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". An expanded edition of Woodstock, the movie, released on June 9, 2009 in Blu-Ray and DVD formats, features additional performances not before seen in the film, and also includes lengthened versions of existing performances featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and others.
