The Woodstock documentary features a lot of interviews and footage of the festival attendees just being themselves. The image and sound quality of the film (for its time) is very good in my opinion. The combination of the high quality recording, the unscripted nature of what’s being recorded, and the age of the recording adds a really special dimension for me. Seeing a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings with their whole lives ahead of them, yet at the same time knowing that what we are seeing was filmed almost 50 years ago. These people aren’t teenagers any more. They’re 70 years old now.
I’m curious if there exists other documentary-style “high quality” color sound film recordings like this - of people just being themselves - that pre-dates the Woodstock documentary?
Well if we use the “around the same time” vs. “pre-date” criterion then Gimme Shelter qualifies.
One of the amateur cameramen was someone called George Lucas. He just showed up with his own camera and later sold footage to the filmmakers. Wondered whatever happened to the kid.
Photos, not film - but still spectacular and something you might be interested in: Everyday scenes of average people in pre-WWI Russia, something which makes you overcome the instinctive feeling that eras of the past were “not real”.
You can try film archives like WPA and others–they have many clips available to preview online, and you can usually restrict searches by time parameters.
not quite what the OP is looking for, but still worth checking out:
There’s a fascinating site called ww.shorpy.com
It’s a photo archive of old photos mostly from newspapers., (stills, not video, mostly in black and white, but some in color.)
The are many photos with non-posed shots of people “just being themselves.”–and way before the Woodstock era!
Here’s one example from 1943, of a group of random people, sitting around in a park. I found it interesting to see blacks and whites sitting side by side, casually sharing the same space.
Yes, I recommend any of the Frederick Wiseman movies you can see. Ironically, the one that is most widely available now is “Titicut Follies,” which was banned for over 20 years. I remember seeing “High School” in the seventies. It took me a while to find on the Internet, and now I forgot where I saw it.