Glastonbury The Movie – 30th Anniversary Cut (12A)

There is a Glastonbury that exists only in memory before the BBC arrived, before phone masts and wall-to-wall coverage, before tickets sold out in minutes, before it all changed. A Glastonbury where dancing in a field was, quite sincerely, considered a radical act. That world is gone. But it was filmed. Shot in Panavision CinemaScope at the 1993 festival, the last of the great old-school Glastonburys, Glastonbury The Movie captured the real thing: not the headline acts on the Pyramid Stage, but the stone circle at sunrise, the rave tents and wandering performers, the parachute games and the Krishna food queues.

The Verve at their very first festival appearance. Spiritualized spending their entire fee on a fireworks display. A cast of thousands, completely themselves. No voiceover. No talking heads. No presenter telling you how to feel. Just Glastonbury, as it was.

Unfiltered, unnarrated, and unlike anything else in British music film. Hailed as “a masterpiece” by Mike Leigh and selected for eight international film festivals, Glastonbury The Movie: The 30th Anniversary Cut has been rebuilt in 4K from the original Panavision negatives, new scenes added, new Dolby 5.1 mix, every frame restored. The result is extraordinary. Back on the big screen. Thirty years on.

This film is part of our Cinema Rewind series.

See all Cinema here.