"You know about Tibet?" an interviewer in Sarah Pirozek's documentary on the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, held in 1996 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, asks a young concertgoer. "Kind of," the kid replies. Boasting live performances by the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Foo Fighters, The Fugees, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck and Bjork, Free Tibet is actually much more than simply a point-and-shoot recording of kids moshing to unintelligible lyrics or guitarists pogo-ing up and down in 3-chord bliss; at it's best, Pirozek's film offers a very even-handed report on the multi-faceted phenomenon of Huge Rock Concerts for Social Causes. Viewers expecting to see a straight concert tape will be surprised by the detailed history of the Chinese occupation of Tibet offered here, including hard-hitting archival footage of Chinese mistreatment of Buddhist monks and nuns. Still, there's plenty of music on hand from some of pop music's biggest acts as well as gifted voices from Tibet--from nuns singing "The Wisdom Shall Overcome" to Beck performing "Asshole"--and the political commentary ranges from the incisive (Anna Sui: "I don't think they make baseball caps here in America anymore") to the decidedly oversimplified (A Tribe Called Quest singing: "Fuck that shit"). And while it's hard to pick out a single most memorable image, I think I'd have to vote for the odd combination of kids knocking the bejeezus out of one another in the mosh pit, while Buddhist monks look on smiling and nodding their earplug-adorned heads. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)
Free Tibet
(1998) 90 min. $19.95. MVP Home Entertainment (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. Vol. 14, Issue 5
Free Tibet
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