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Review

It’s summer in Canada in 1970, and promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton want to one-up Woodstock by taking it on the road. They rent a train and pack in Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Band, Buddy Guy, Delaney & Bonnie, Ian & Sylvia, Sha-Na-Na, the Flying Burrito Brothers and more, and start a nonstop party of mythic proportions that became the stuff of legend. That legend prompted a music aficionado to track down footage stored for 25 years in the Canadian National Archives; it took another 10 years to finish the film. The train became its own world as it traveled from Toronto to Winnipeg to Calgary (with one emergency stop when they ran out of liquor), the concert stops becoming necessary interruptions to the real action on board. The film is as raw, immediate and authentic as the talent it displays: these guys didn’t travel with hair stylists, make-up artists, dressers, choreographers, private chefs and personal assistants. All they carried was their home-grown talent and an overriding love of music. They knew the Festival was bleeding money but they traveled on, with no lip-synching and no hope of a profit. Festival Express works as a documentary, a concert film and a window to a lost era.

 -- Ann Yarabinee