{"id":322627,"date":"2025-11-30T16:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/322627\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T16:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T16:11:07","slug":"new-john-yoko-film-shows-rare-footage-of-the-beatles-legend-in-syracuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/322627\/","title":{"rendered":"New \u2018John & Yoko\u2019 film shows rare footage of The Beatles legend in Syracuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new documentary film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono<\/a> features rare footage of The Beatles<\/a> legend in Syracuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne to One: John & Yoko\u201d premiered earlier this month on HBO, focusing on the couple\u2019s life in the early 1970s. Highlights include an intimate look at their life in a Greenwich Village apartment in New York, social activism amid the Vietnam War, and restored video of their \u201cOne to One\u201d benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, Lennon\u2019s only full-length show after leaving the Beatles.<\/p>\n

But some of the never-before-seen material also includes scenes of Lennon and Ono at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y. The \u201cunfinished\u201d exhibition, Ono\u2019s first solo museum show, opened on Oct. 8, 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be unfinished always because every piece in this exhibition is also growing because people add things to it,” Ono says.<\/p>\n

The doc shows the large crowd of more than 6,000 that gathered at the Everson for a glimpse of Lennon and Ono. At one point, the couple is seen having a private meal at a table in the lobby of the museum while fans look on from the balcony.<\/p>\n

\"JohnThis 1971 file photo shows Yoko Ono, right, and her husband John Lennon putting the finishing touches on her show, “This is Not Here…An Exhibit of Conceptual Works of Art,” at the Everson Art Museum in Syracuse, N.Y. (Bettmann Archive | Getty Images)Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n

Fans can also see some of Ono\u2019s exhibit, including a partially eaten apple starting to rot, a boy hammering a piece of metal, empty picture frames, and a girl who bumps into a wall inside a glass maze. Famed beat poet Allen Ginsberg even reads a poem (\u201c…only U.S. honkies smear feces twixt their buttocks with clean paper…\u201c) as a \u201dsculpture” by Ginsberg and Ono.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne to One: John & Yoko,\u201d directed by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald, premiered Nov. 14 on HBO and is currently streaming on HBO Max<\/a>. The scenes from Syracuse\u2019s Everson Museum are shown between the 17:50 and 20:12 marks.<\/p>\n

Macdonald includes footage of car commercials, news reports, phone calls and television broadcasts to simulate the changing of TV channels, according to IndieWire<\/a>. It simulates the way Lennon and Ono learned about America at the time by extensively watching TV, as well as adds context to songs performed by Lennon, Ono and The Elephant\u2019s Memory Band during the \u201cOne to One\u201d concert. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been very interesting \u2013 people in their teens and early 20s who\u2019ve watched the film totally get it in a way, because it is the sort of TikTok wave of experience of the world. And they\u2019re inspired by the \u2018Let\u2019s get out there and change the world\u2019 sort of simplicity of John and Yoko\u2019s message, but also, they don\u2019t care if they don\u2019t know who everyone is. They\u2019re picking it up as they go, and I think that\u2019s a fun kind of experience,\u201d Macdonald told IndieWire.<\/p>\n

Executive producers include Brad Pitt and the couple\u2019s son, Sean Ono Lennon, who newly remixed the music for the documentary. Sean Lennon said he thinks the concert footage will also show audiences his mother\u2019s singing talent in a way that she\u2019s not given credit for.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t blame people for not appreciating a certain style of my mother\u2019s more experimental vocalizations,\u201d he told NPR<\/a>. But what I think is unfortunate about it is that that kind of avant garde, you know, howling, as it were, really overshadows the fact that she does have very beautiful conventional songs as well… And almost no one has heard those because they don\u2019t get the attention. But she sings and writes beautifully, I think, and she has many facets to her, you know, musical vocabulary.”<\/p>\n

\"JohnThis 1971 file photo shows Yoko Ono, left, and her husband John Lennon celebrating his 31st birthday before the opening of her art exhibit at the Everson Art Museum in Syracuse, N.Y. (Bettmann Archive | Getty Images)Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n

Ono, who now lives on an Upstate New York farm<\/a> she bought with Lennon, married the Beatles singer in 1969 and had one child together, Sean. Her 1971 art exhibit in Syracuse drew thousands of visitors, including celebrities like Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol and actor Dennis Hopper.<\/p>\n

Lennon, who was killed by Mark David Chapman<\/a> in 1980, is widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters in music history. As a solo artist, his hits included \u201cImagine,\u201d \u201cWoman,\u201d \u201cBeautiful Boy (Darling Boy),\u201d \u201cJealous Guy\u201d and \u201cHappy Xmas (War is Over).\u201d<\/p>\n

Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were also internationally famous as The Beatles with hits like \u201cLet It Be,\u201d \u201cIn My Life,\u201d \u201cI Want to Hold Your Hand,\u201d \u201cCome Together,\u201d \u201cHelp!\u201d and \u201cAll You Need is Love.\u201d The Fab Four broke up in 1970, but their music remains popular today with streaming services, influence on other artists, documentaries (like \u201cThe Beatles Anthology<\/a>\u201d and Peter Jackson\u2019s \u201cGet Back<\/a>\u201d) and multiple Beatles-inspired stories (including the 2007 movie \u201cAcross the Universe,\u201d Netflix\u2019s animated kids\u2019 show \u201cThe Beat Bugs,\u201d Cirque du Soleil\u2019s \u201cLove,\u201d Danny Boyle\u2019s 2019 film \u201cYesterday\u201d and four upcoming biopics about John, Paul, George and Ringo).<\/p>\n

See a trailer for \u201cOne to One: John & Yoko\u201d:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new documentary film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono features rare footage of The Beatles legend in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[164888,88,164889,216,164890,164891,164892,164893,164894],"class_list":{"0":"post-322627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-celebritiescb2","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-john-lennoncb3","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-musiccb2","13":"tag-syracusecb2","14":"tag-two-peoplecb2","15":"tag-visual-artscb1","16":"tag-yoko-onocb3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}