On the occasion of the publication of his new book, Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont (July 10, Thomas Dunne Books), writer and critic Saul Austerlitz joins the Film Society to present a double bill of two key cinematic documents of Altamont and its legacy: Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter (1970) and Sam Green’s Lot 63, Grave C (2006), to be followed by a panel moderated by Austerlitz with Gimme Shelter cinematographer Joan Churchill, producer Porter Bibb, editor Mirra Bank, and Judy Maysles.

Saul Austerlitz has had work published in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, Slate, The Village Voice, The New Republic, San Francisco Chronicle, Spin, Rolling Stone, and Paste. He is the author of several books, including Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes. He lives in Brooklyn.

Gimme Shelter
Albert & David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, USA, 1970, 91m
Among the greatest music docs ever made, the Maysles and Zwerin’s vérité classic indelibly captures the Rolling Stones in 1969 on the road to one of the most infamous events in rock and roll history: the Altamont Free Concert. Gimme Shelter follows the Stones and their associates as they participate in the negotiations to make the concert happen, only for poor planning and the involvement of the Hells Angels to turn its utopian promise of peace, love, and music on its head when 18-year-old Meredith Hunter is stabbed. One of the most enduringly powerful records of a historical event in all of cinema, Gimme Shelter is a searing real-time chronicle of the death of ’60s idealism.
Preceded by:
Lot 63, Grave C
Sam Green, USA, 2006, 10m
Green’s short-form inquiry into the death of Meredith Hunter is also an investigation into the death of an era, structured around a visit to Hunter’s then-unmarked gravesite.

Cinematographer Joan Churchill will also participate in a Q&A at Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer during The Female Gaze on Monday, July 30. Get tickets here.