"Murray Lerner and his colleagues have edited footage taken at the Newport Folk Festival over a three-year period, and the result is a clever documentary that contains all of the frenetic atmosphere, full-throated ecstasies of performers, volatile audience reactions and detached observation that transforms Newport into a semi-deranged Elysium every summer...Festival is a companion piece to Bert Stern's memorable Jazz on a Summer's Day because it also takes time to avert its camera-images toward the rural surroundings, and the passages of night into morning, attempting to catch the essence of these elusive interludes of song. Here is a film that is dedicated to the lyric utterances of the American people...inspiring dormant hope for humanity." (Albert Johnson, San Francisco International Film Festival `67). Featuring Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Mississippi John Hurt, Judy Collins and others.