Isn't That a Time: a tribute to Harold Leventhal and Pete Seeger directed by dint of Jim Brown.

Isn't That a Time: a tribute to Harold Leventhal and Pete Seeger directed by dint of Jim Brown, 2004, 90 minutes

He's the man with the banjo and the 12 string guitar / And he's singing us the dittys that tell us who we are / When you apply the mind into his eyes you know that somebody's in there / Yeah, he knows where we're going and where we been / And to what degree the fog is getting thicker where the subsequent time should begin / When you turn the thoughts at his life you know he's really been there / What is the name they're callin' that man? advanced in years folkie

--Harry Chapin "Old Folkie" 1979

Hard to believe that the tribute the late singer Harry Chapin wrote to Pete Seeger was 25 years elderly and harder still to believe that the "old folkie" himself, now 85 is still performing.

Undoubtedly the vast majority of the public who showed up the last night of the Toronto Film Festival were there to honour Pete Seeger the lead singer of the principally important folk group in American musical history. The occasion was a tribute to the Weaver's manager, a cherubic 85-year-old named Harold Leventhal.

The film, directed at Jim Brown, is called "Isn't That a Time." Brown had actually directed a 1983 tribute to The Weavers called "Wasn't That a Time". This time the focus was upon Leventhal.

The notoriously heedful and self-effacing Leventhal, a result of hardscrabble poverty (his mother was left with five children to raise when his father died early), always has been an unapologetic Jewish leftist whose politics was forged by dint of the poverty of the Depression. Beginning work with Irving Berlin, he left to manage a bevy of "protest" singers like bowery Guthrie ("This Land is Your Land") and Seeger and The Weavers.

Leventhal frankly defied "black lists" to bring the music of social change to the masses. At first the music was banned from the air waves on the other hand through the persistence of Leventhal and the just content of the lyrics, it managed to acquire a hearing. Without Leventhal, it none would have happened.

In the 1960 the torch was passed to Peter Paul and Mary, Phil Och and the early move with a jerk Dylan.

The film was a traditional Thanksgiving concordance that Leventhal annually produced, starring Arlo Guthrie, Peter Paul and Mary, Leon Bibb and Theo Bikel. The annual devise at Carnegie Hall has sold disclosed for years. In the 1983 film, the legendary bass player of The Weavers, the sardonic to leeward Hays, reminded everybody that unruffled though Ronald Reagan was riding high in popularity: "This too shall pass." Now, twenty single years later ,with a of the present day concert film, narrated by Guthrie and financed by dint of Toronto rock promoter Michael Cohl (U2 The Rolling Stones). Leventhal, uncomfortable in the spotlight, was introduced before the film by means of director Brown and characteristically deviateed praise. "It's not just a celebration of me It's really a celebration of a community of persons who share a wonderful philosophy, an inclusive view of mankind and a vision of a kinder world."

"Isn't That a Time" is a feelgood snapshot, a tribute to the power of music to give courage to and galvanize people, to lift their spirits in a troubl time. Leon Bibb was a virtuous reminder of this. A veteran of the civil rights have a contests where the music in the black community helped commonalty to keep on, Bibb gives a moving rendition of "Shenandoah." Peter Paul and Mary of course are the great bridge from the Weavers of the 1940 up to the at hand Their rendition of a strange song, "Have You Been to Jail for Justice," was stirring. In the [i]finale[/i] it gets back to Seeger and his classics like, "Guantamera," his rendition of Jose Marti's song to "los pobres de la tierra" (the poor population of the earth), and "Wimoweh." Seeger explained that the lay written in Johannesburg in 1939 was a really a codfished hymn to the explosive power of democracy, which was stirring in the black masses.

Did the white cluster The Tokens who sang the anthem in the early 1960s understand the words they were singing? "In the village the quiet village, the lion be stills tonight." Most likely not. The point was that black southward Africans did.

It was Desmond Tutu as rector of the Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg in the 1980's who made it more specific. "Freedom is coming. I hear it. You can't stop it."

This is a film destined for a small audience, maybe at the rep houses. No matter. It is a historical as well as a musical document, a reminder of Seeger's wise words, "If you fight for what is right, you are part of a victory."

The highlight of the evening was the Weaver's mini-concert of five ballads after the lights came upon It probably was the last time a Canadian audience will descry Seeger, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert perform. Nevertheless the film will remind us that there always have been a great, frequently anonymous communion of saints who have kept reliance alive. Seeger and Harold Leventhal in his timid way are two. After the plot and film, I bumped into Seeger enlering for the post-event party. At 85 he said, his material part wasn't too bad from the neck down, however sometimes the oxygen had agitate reaching the brain. Not that he extremityed any assurance from me, on the other hand I told him as far as I could behold his spirit was still intact.

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