Screenvision, in partnership with Ace Arts, and multiple-award winning music documentary producer Iambic Media, brings one of the music world’s true “lost treasures” to the big screen with the feature presentation of “The Beatles: The Lost Concert.” The new 92-minute documentary charts the birth and impact of Beatlemania in America and includes, in its entirety, their first-ever full U.S. concert performance from February 11, 1964 at D.C.’s Washington Coliseum, the only complete Beatles’ concert available to fans, one which has remained unseen by movie theater audiences across the nation for over 47 years. Rock superstar and American Idol judge Steven Tyler commented: “This blows away every performance I’ve ever seen including Elvis!”
The story of their historic arrival in America, that launched the British Invasion, and the impact they had is revealed through new interviews with more than 20 Beatles’ associates, journalists, disc jockeys, concert attendees, historians and music luminaries and archival footage of the Fab Four. The list includes Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, rock pioneer Chuck Berry, super producer Mark Ronson, journalists Maureen Cleave, Larry Kane and Ed Rudy, concert promoter Sid Bernstein, Beatle George’s sister Louise Harrison, The Strokes’ Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi, chart-topping U.K. songstress Duffy, renown Beatles historian Bruce Spizer, and Mike Mitchell, whose recently unearthed photos of the event are seen throughout the movie.
Trailer provided by Video Detective
Sure to rekindle the fires of Beatlemania for both the generation who lived it and the younger ones influenced by it, the event will be shown in movie theaters across the U.S. in a limited engagement on May 17 and 22, 2012. For information and tickets, go to www.lostbeatlesconcert.com
“The Beatles: The Lost Concert‘ is an amazing film. It shows the effect the Beatles had on a whole generation, and explains and underlines the excitement the world felt when the Fab Four burst on the scene,” said Chris Hunt, CEO, Ace Arts.
Darryl Schaffer, EVP of Exhibitor Relations, Screenvision said: “We’re sure this will be a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical event, with huge, cross-generational appeal and box office impact.”
In addition, a special World Premiere showing is scheduled at New York’s landmark Ziegfield Theater on May 6 with 2 showings.
About “The Beatles: The Lost Concert“
On February 11, 1964, two days after their record shattering appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” The Beatles traveled by train through a snowstorm to Washington, D.C. to perform their first-ever concert before an American audience at The Washington Coliseum, an indoor facility that hosted basketball, hockey and boxing matches and seated around 7,000 fans. Because of the design, The Beatles performed on a makeshift boxing-style stage “in-the-round” and had to move around the microphones and manually rotate Ringo’s drum kit, which was on a circular riser, several times throughout the concert to face a different segment of the audience. It would be the only time in their career that they would play in-the-round.
After brief performances by The Caravelles, The Chiffons and Tommy Roe, The Beatles took the stage for a 12-song set that lasted a little over a half-hour, including both chart-topping originals like “She Loves You” and “I Saw Her Standing There” and high-energy covers like “Twist and Shout” and the concert-opener, Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” It was The Beatles at their absolute best, full of enthusiasm and exuberance and clearly overwhelmed by the astonishing reception that the overbooked teenage audience of 8,092 screaming (mostly female) fans gave them. It was the largest audience they had played for at that time; but only 6 months later, they would be playing to much larger audiences when they returned to America for their first full tour of the United States.
The concert was professionally filmed by an eight-camera crew and mixed live on location. A month later, on March 14and 15, it was broadcast via closed-circuit to movie theaters across America and was seen by an estimated 2 million teenagers. The film of the concert was then lost and remained unseen in its entirety by audiences for over 47 years! The original master tapes changed hands privately several times over the years and have now been restored and re-mastered by Iambic Media’s Chris Hunt, and the entire remastered concert, the ONLY complete Beatles concert available to fans, is included in The Beatles: The Lost Concert.
The resonating impact of the Beatles’ in performance is illustrated in the raves given in interviews during the documentary, by both classic and contemporary recording stars and authorities. Commenting on them as musical competition for all who came in their wake, Mark Ronson, the producer behind hits from Amy Winehouse and Adele, adds: “You’re always going to be standing in the shadow of The Beatles.” Liverpool native and U.K. pop sensation Duffy calls them “the Holy Grail of music,” while Mike Mitchell, the young photographer who chronicled the show, adds: “The concert was like being in the delivery room at the birth of an entire generation.” Tommy Roe, one of their opening acts that evening may have put it best: “This is history!”
The unprecedented documentary and concert film recounts the whole story of the birth of Beatlemania in America, from an initial phone call from U.S. promoter Sid Bernstein to the manager of a then-unknown band from the UK all the way through to their first-ever historic and triumphant U.S. concert at the Washington, D.C. Coliseum. Through archival and new interviews with some of the people who were there, and chock full of memorabilia, rare footage and artifacts, it details how The Beatles were first brought to America, their struggle to get a U.S. record contract and airplay, how their first concert was booked and all the incredible events of that historic day in February when the Fab Four went to Washington, D.C. to perform a full concert in front of an American audience for the first time, following their earth-shaking performance before 70+ million viewers on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” An incredible series of photographs recently discovered from a local photographer, the then 18-year-old Mike Mitchell, show The Beatles arriving at Union Station in D.C., at the press conference held at the Coliseum that afternoon, and at the concert itself.
About SCREENVISION
Headquartered in New York, N.Y., Screenvision is a national leader in cinema advertising, offering on-screen advertising, in-lobby promotions and integrated marketing programs to national, regional and local advertisers and providing comprehensive cinema advertising representation services for its theatrical exhibitor partners. The Screenvision cinema advertising network is comprised of over 14,300 screens in 2,350+ theater locations across all 50 states and 94% of DMAs nationwide; delivering through more than 150 theatrical circuits, including 10 of the top 15 exhibitor companies. With the recent introduction of its new pre-show, The Limelight, Screenvision has created the first 2-screen configuration targeted to the big screen and mobile devices, enabling advertisers to fully capitalize upon mobile interactivity and social connectivity with their ad buys coast-to-coast. For more information: www.screenvision.com.
About ACE ARTS
Ace Arts, based in New York and England, specializes in distributing performing arts events, concerts and documentaries in North America
