Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99

Raw TV for Netflix

Director: Jamie Crawford   

Editor: Chris Duveen                       

Chris Duveen spent nearly 9 months working on this three part feature archive documentary which delves into the controversial Woodstock ’99 festival, an event so disastrous that it was labelled “the day the music died”.

The festival set to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original 1969 event drew crowds upwards of 400,000. The scene at Griffiss Air Force Base would soon become marred by a string of disastrous events, from poor environmental conditions to crime, and ending in a fiery riot during a performance. The series features interviews from Woodstock creator Michael Lang, festival goers and journalists, who reveal how several contributing factors, including a lack of water and stifling temperatures, led to violence, vandalism and fires.

The Guardian describes the documentary as “A brisk and often horrifying watch, Trainwreck is effective at ramping up the tension and building a sense of dread and impending disaster. Each episode follows a day of the festival, from an optimistic start on Friday through to the apocalyptic scenes in the early hours of Monday morning, using a ticking clock to count down to each fresh catastrophe”

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 edited by Chris Duveen is streaming now on Netflix.