Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 24, 2018

News of Nicolas Roeg’s passing at age 90 crossed my newsfeed at almost the exact moment I finished watching his 1972 documentary Glastonbury Fayre and had settled down at my computer to begin writing about it, and that news of course casts a kind of melancholic, elegiac tone to my reaction. In a way it makes Glastonbury Fayre perhaps even more emotionally relevant, since the film accentuates, in Roeg’s own words as captured on a commentary track included on this release as a supplement, the hopefulness of youth, when life stretches out seemingly in infinite ways and with more than sufficient time to achieve whatever goals may have been set by those selfsame young folks who are feeling so positive about the future. Roeg himself was at least relatively young (in his early forties) when Glastonbury Fayre was shot, and the film has a certain loosey goosey charm that emphasizes the freewheeling attitudes of attendees to what was marketed as not “just” a live outdoor musical festival, but a kind of hippie fueled performing arts extravaganza that was meant to augur a new kind of Utopia. Watching a bunch of obviously drug inspired naked folks (of both genders) lolling about in the mud soaked fields of Pilton might hardly be some people’s idea of “Utopia”, but there’s a rather sweet innocence to the proceedings here that is distinctly different from some of the darker aspects of Roeg’s narrative films like Walkabout and Don't Look Now.

It’s probably apt in at least one way to think of Glastonbury Fayre as “Nicolas Roeg’s Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music”, but in some other ways, there are manifest differences, at least in how each film treats its subject concert. Without disparaging in any way the talents on hand for the Glastonbury affair, for many Americans at least the marquee value of acts like Melanie and Fairport Convention may simply not have the same allure as some of the iconic names that showed up at Yasgur’s farm. (To be fair, Traffic performs, albeit a little shakily, and evidently some guy named David Bowie or something like that was also in attendance but perhaps rights issues kept his material from being featured in the film.) One way or the other, though, frankly Roeg himself seems not to care all that much about the music, and in fact spends probably at least as much if not more time just traipsing around the fields and capturing the various folks attending, while also devoting time to some of the organizers like Michael Eavis, Arabella Churchill and Andrew Kerr, themselves seeming “Utopians” hoping for a bright future brought about by the “peace and love” metaphysics favored by the youth of the day.

Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Glastonbury Fayre is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.35:1. The film was cobbled together from 16mm footage shot not just by Roeg but by a handful of other people (some who would probably not be considered "professionals"), and as such there's a fairly wide variance in terms of "baked in" elements like focus pulling, framing and the like. There's an appealing grittiness to this transfer, with an abundant and natural looking grain field, though occasionally compression can look just a bit motley, especially in some of the fairly frequent dimly lit and/or nighttime material. Otherwise, though, the palette pops rather nicely throughout, though there's a slightly blue tint to the proceedings at times, and some close-ups offer good detail levels. There doesn't appear to have been much if any restoration done here, though the damage that's on display in terms of dirt, nicks and white flecks, is never overly distracting.

Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Glastonbury Fayre features an LPCM 2.0 track that captures both the cacophony and energy of the performances, as well as the tangential "noise" offered by the hordes of attendees seemingly high as kites on — well, something. There are variances in amplitude and overall fidelity throughout the presentation here, at least some of which I'm attributing to on the fly recording techniques, but all of the talking head material comes through clearly enough.

Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Nic Roeg


• The Making of Glastonbury Fayre (1080p; 35:33) has some excellent interviews with several personnel associated with the film. This is kind of strangely anamorphically squeezed so that everything looks really skinny.


• Glastonbury Fayre Trailer (1080p; 3:53)

Trailers for other MVD Visual releases are also included.

Glastonbury Fayre Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Roeg fans will probably be flocking to some of his better known material to honor his memory in the wake (no pun intended) of his passing, but those who want to see a somewhat cheerier and arguably even more chaotic Roeg film than some of his wending narrative films will find a lot to like in Glastonbury Fayre. The music is almost a sidebar in this piece, which nonetheless manages to capture a certain zeitgeist fairly effortlessly. Technical merits are decent given the source elements, and Glastonbury Fayre comes Recommended.