Gimme Shelter de Albert and David Maysles

 

“Gimme Shelter” (1970) considerado el documental maldito de la historia del rock y el lado B de la utopía registrada en el filme Woodstock. “Gimme Shelter” narra los acontecimientos sucedidos en un concierto gratuito que los Rolling Stones que ofrecieron en Altamont durante su gira de 1969. El recital, cuya seguridad estaba a cargo de los siniestros motoristas llamados “Angeles del Infierno”, se convirtió en un desorden cuya culminación fue el asesinato de un espectador. La obra que contínuamente da la sensación de estar asistiendo al triste fin de una época idealista, fué el trabajo de los documentalistas Albert y David Maysles.

And the filmmakers don't beg any indulgence for themselves. True, they never lay out within the film that the Stones had hired them. And they don't touch on the role the movie played in precipitating the concert's last-minute move from Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma to Altamont Speedway. (Among other conditions, Filmways Inc., which controlled Sears Point, wanted the film's distribution rights.)

But by using the structural device of having the Stones witness the footage, the filmmakers break the illusion of seamless omniscience – an illusion they're skillful enough to maintain if they want to – and raise the question of their own complicity. Why are they showing this chronicle to the Stones? Are they themselves looking for the Stones' approval – and our blessing? Gimme Shelter is a self-reflexive movie in the best sense: While presenting a chronicle of a catastrophe, it implicitly asks the audience to keep one eye focused on the chroniclers.

As I thought about the movie and interviewed a dozen people who either worked on it or attended the concert, several directed me toward the Jan. 21, 1970, Rolling Stone, which devoted 15 copy-crammed pages to Altamont under the headline, "Let It Bleed." It is often spoken of as the ultimate authority on the event. But when it comes to the widespread misrepresentation of the movie, I discovered, it was more like a smoking gun.

Marcus was at Altamont and with 10 others helped cover it for that issue of Rolling Stone; John Burks edited their contributions, newsweekly style, into one headlong unsigned piece. It's a mammoth and laudable example of on-the-spot journalism, and it helped redefine the concert in the public consciousness as the anti-Woodstock.