Mods And Rockers Festival: Inside Pennebaker's Soul

This weekend the Mods & Rockers Film Festival - presents a five-film salute to soul music and the 50th anniversary of Stax Records. The opening event is a special screening of "Only The Strong Survive" made by filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and his wife Chris Hegedus. The film captures some of the great soul performers. In this - the second of a series of special blogs for Huffington Post in which Pennebaker looks back at his films - he reflects on the making of "Only The Strong Survive".

Only The Strong Survive is a film I made with my wife Chris Hegedus. It was shot on video and it's different. You don't load every ten minutes and you can capture a lot on hour-long tapes. You live inside the camera for a long time and that's a different kind of experience.

Chris did kind of drag me to video with my feet braced against the door. But the fact is that now I've come to like it quite a bit. Sometimes when I see prints of films, particularly where we've had color and it's really come out well, I think, "God I miss that." But then I look at what we can do with video I think this is worth it.

We filmed the performers around the live music circuit they were working in 1999 and 2000. Their bookings were a combination of awards shows, clubs, small halls and benefit concerts. That's what is left for them. If we had all the money in the world we could have arranged a big show for them to do at The Apollo Theater and we'd get the musicians, and the whole thing. And we didn't want to do that. We wanted it to be the gigs that they set up, with their musicians and we wanted to be there just like the audience. In the end it seemed 'righter' then trying to set it all up and do it like television.

We tried to find people who were coming into the New York area partially, and found groups that represented different aspects of soul music. Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Stax...

We had heard about a Luther Ingram benefit in Memphis and a lot of the Stax musicians came for that event. Mary Wilson was filmed during her 40th anniversary tour of the Supremes. It's got great people in it. People such as Sam Moore, Isaac Hayes, Wilson Pickett, Carla and Rufus Thomas, Mary Wilson, Ann Peebles. These guys actually perform all the time. So they are doing songs from 25 years ago and more, and they're just as good as they were back then.

Rufus Thomas is fantastic in the movie. Rufus got captured on film and so did Carla Thomas. It was interesting for me to talk to Carla about Otis Redding because as a high school kid she was at his band rehearsals. That was exciting.

Rufus Thomas ... What a face ... He had such a marvelous way of dealing with the instant. Everything is as funny as it is at that instance. That's amazing. He's like a 12 year old. I love that. I'd seen a picture of him before we did the film, and I thought, "that's a great face to film!" And when we went to visit him at the radio station. There he was. I couldn't take my camera off him. He was so wonderful just to look at. We had two cameras, which normally we don't. But we started shooting Rufus on-air the way we would shoot a narrative film, so we could cut quick dialogue, and it gave it a whole kind of style that I thought was 'radio like'.

THE "MODS & ROCKERS FESTIVAL" BLOGS

• GREGORY WEINKAUF - Picking Up Every Stitch...
• D.A. PENNEBAKER - Inside Pennebaker's Soul
• STEVE HOCHMAN -
Memo To Al Gore
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Monterey Pop Goes Pow!
• MICHELLE PHILLIPS - California Dreaming Becoming a Reality • JERRY MILLER - Grapeful for Monterey
• HARVEY KUBERNIK - UP In Monterey...
• GREGORY WEINKAUF - Skidoo Does Hollywood...
• STANLEY DORFMAN - Zeppelin Takes Flight
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Tripping Back to 1960s London...
• D.A. PENNEBAKER - Pennebaker on "Pop"
• MARTIN LEWIS - ROCK Like An Egyptian!
• DAVID HABER - Really With The Beatles
• PAUL WILLIAMS - Nilsson Is My Cup Of Tea
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Festival Opens & Explains "What's Happening!"
• PAUL KRASSNER - Skidoo
• MARTIN LEWIS - First Night Report!
• STEPHEN BISHOP - The Beatles Were My True Parents
• ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM - Mocking The Rockers
• BRUCE SPIZER -The Beatles Were Coming!
• MARTIN LEWIS - Movies For Nothing And Kicks For Free..

MORE "MODS & ROCKERS FESTIVAL" BLOGS COMING SOON FROM

• ERIC BURDON