JIMI HENDRIX: ELECTRIC CHURCH

JOHN MCDERMOTT | USA | 2017 | 105 MIN | NR

This screening will feature live music prior to start time.

ELECTRIC CHURCH tells the story of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s involvement as the headliner of the Second Atlanta International Pop Festival, then hailed as the ‘Southern Woodstock’.

Jimi Hendrix was the critical component he needed to elevate the three day festival to a major cultural event. ELECTRIC CHURCH features interviews with Hendrix’s Experience band mates Billy Cox and the late Mitch Mitchell as well as Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, Rich Robinson, Kirk Hammett, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and many others.

Paul McCartney freely admits to worshipping him, adding, “We all played guitar. We all knew a bit. But he seemed to know more than us.”

His performance at the Second Atlanta International Pop Festival was not only significant on a musical level, but also in terms of socio-political dynamics. It was assumed that rural audiences would not take kindly to “long-hair” bands, and that black and white artists could not comfortably exist on the same bill; Atlanta Pop set out to challenge those beliefs. Hendrix’s music and message of universal love made him the ideal artist and, appropriately, was the first act booked for the festival.