Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary captures many of the performances, and much of the chaos, that took place during the groundbreaking Woodstock Music and Art Festival held on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York from August 15 through 18, 1969.

Director Michael Wadleigh arrived at Bethel with sixteen camera operators and thousands of reels of film. They reportedly exposed 120 miles of footage, which was edited primarily by Thelma Schoonmaker – who would go on to cut most of Martin Scorsese’s movies – with help from Scorsese as an apprentice editor.

A director’s cut released in 1994 clocks in at 225 minutes, and includes performances by Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, who were left out of the theatrical version. Canned Heat’s “Going Up The Country” was heard in the 1970 version, but the band actually performs in the extended cut as well.

Richie Havens starts the show off fiercely on acoustic guitar with “Handsome Johnny,” followed by an improvised “Freedom.” Canned Heat does a rockin’ blues version of “A Change Is Gonna Come” that kills. The Who are shot in dazzling slow motion dissolves and split screens performing “See Me/Feel Me” and “Summertime Blues,” though we don’t get to see Pete Townsend kick Abbie Hoffman off the stage as reportedly went down at the show.

Country Joe McDonald leads the crowd through “I Feel Like I’m Fixin To Die Rag.” Lyrics appear on the bottom of the screen with bouncing ball for those like me who have not committed the anti-war anthem to memory. Buzzkills include Joan Baez – a tremendous vocalist whose music doesn’t exactly inspire thousands to put their hands together – and Sha Na Na, who must have been invited to guarantee that at least one act wouldn’t go on stage inebriated.

Arlo Guthrie, transparently stoned, is surprisingly good doing “Coming Into Los Angeles” and marveling that traffic has shut down the New York Throughway. In addition to Jefferson Airplane (“Saturday Afternoon,” “Uncle Sam’s Blues”) and Janis Joplin (“Work Me, Lord”), it’s Crosby, Stills & Nash, Santana, and closer Jimi Hendrix who stayed in my head after the movie was over. They seem to best represent what the festival was about.

Woodstock is probably sixty percent concert, forty percent concert-goers. My favorite moment is a camera crew filming the toilet facilities and telling a dude that they’re making a movie. “What’s it called?” “Port-O-San.” The townspeople – down to the chief of police – weigh in and almost unanimously support the kids, remarking how well they’ve behaved.

One of those kids, interviewed on the side of the road and who may have never even made it to the show, sums it up best: “People who are nowhere are coming here because there’s people they think are somewhere. Everybody is looking for some kind of answer. When there isn’t one.”

Wadleigh could have – and probably should have – assembled a concert film of the performances, then made a whole other documentary about the 400,000 who made it to the festival and what effect it had on them (before they forgot they went), as well as the effect Woodstock had on pop culture at large.

Roger Ebert pointed out that without this movie, Woodstock would have been vaguely remembered as rock concert that produced some recordings. It was the film that gave a generation a voice and made Woodstock part of American myth. This is a testament to Wadleigh and his crew, who do a spectacular job of making you feel like you were there, from the intense close-ups of the performers, to the crowds huddling in plastic fighting off the rain.

I couldn’t help but think that most of the lost, stoned or shirtless peace lovers who massed at Bethel for answers probably moved to the suburbs and bought a station wagon in the ensuing years. Despite that, what I took from the film was that thousands – who just didn’t feel like going along with the program for a brief moment in history – got together to hear some great music.

The Band and The Grateful Dead performed at the festival, but are not featured in either cut of the film. And due to what he felt were problems with the sound, John Fogerty didn’t want Creedence Clearwater Revival’s performance included. As concert films go, they don’t get any better than this. Put it in and get lost for almost four hours.