New documentary series on Netflix
“Woodstock ’99”: Perhaps the worst festival that has ever taken place
“Woodstock ’99” is a new documentary series on Netflix
© Netflix © 2022
The Woodstock Festival in 1999 was to be as successful as its model 30 years earlier. But instead of love, peace and music, there was arson, violence and sexual assault. Netflix is now showing the story in a documentary series.
Going to a festival is something you won’t soon forget. In everyday life, a bracelet usually reminds you of the experience for a long time. The weekend of July 23-25, 1999 in Rome, New York is also vividly remembered by visitors to “Woodstock ’99”. However, it might have been the worst festival they’ve ever been to.
The new Netflix documentary series “Absolute Fiasco: Woodstock ’99” vividly tells how this could happen. Different episodes are shown in three parts, increasing from the absurd to the horrible, thus shedding light on the dark side of the festival. It’s Netflix’s second production about a failed festival. In 2019 the documentary “Fyre” was shown, which is about the Fyre Festival that never took place.
Original footage in “The Absolute Fiasco: Woodstock ’99” shows the fires being set and a loudspeaker tower falling on the crowd. There are reports of sexual assaults and rapes and how the atmosphere heated up and finally exploded.
“Woodstock ’99”: The mood escalated at the festival
Rave production manager A.J. Srybnik describes it this way: “Everyone was having fun, but there was no control. There were hundreds of thousands of naked people on the premises. That meant trouble. Chaos had broken out. You didn’t know what was going to happen next. ” Other contemporary witnesses say the mood was threatening. Another added: “The situation became extremely critical. People became aggressive, the worst sides of people came to light.”
The documentary also tries to give an answer to the why. One of them goes like this: At that time, a bottle of water cost about 65 cents in the supermarket, at the festival you wanted 4 dollars. It was a point that infuriated the visitors. They called the supply costs and the entrance fees a rip-off. It was “an event that was supposed to make money,” a person in charge is quoted as saying. “Peace, love and understanding evaporated,” said another.
All in all, an interesting format worth seeing, which illustrates what happens when too much money is being made from something – and people are upset about it. A still contemporary and instructive documentary about an event that younger Netflix users in particular may not yet know.