Stop Making Sense to Eras: Ten of the greatest concert films
Taylor Swift, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, and Jimi Hendrix: all the stars of showpiece concert films
Jonathan Demme's film captured Talking Heads at their absolute peak.
Completely unpredictable but perfectly choreographed, the film thrives by doing something few other concert films do: it almost completely omits shots of the audience, putting the focus firmly on David Byrne et al for classics like 'Psycho Killer', and 'This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)'.
Recently re-released on the big screen for its 40th anniversary, it is finding a whole new generation to wow.
An "intimate, in-depth look" at the world's biggest pop star on the world's biggest stage, this film depicts Beyonce's 2018 performance at the Coachella music festival.
On-stage performances are spliced with backstage interviews and footage of Beyonce and her team practicing.
While some of the standout scenes come in these off-stage moments, it's impossible to finish this and not be in awe of her performance.
Watch out for the sequel: Renaissance is due out December 1.
A classic; no list of the greatest concert films can be complete without including Martin Scorsese's 1978s film depicting the "farewell concert appearance" of The Band.
Joined by dozens of special guests, including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, the film shows The Band at the end of more than a decade-and-a-half on the road.
Still, little sign of them wavering: it should be played loud, all 178 minutes of it.
This 185-minute epic (which counts Martin Scorsese among its editors) depicts the 1969 edition of Woodstock.
You are well beyond the two-hour mark before Jimi Hendrix makes his appearance, but appearances from The Who, Janis Joplin, and others ensure it's a snip.
Woodstock set the template for the decades of music festivals to come, and this 1970 documentary did the same for concert films.
A film documenting a farewell gig, which turned out not to be a farewell gig.
This time, it's LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden.
The film follows the band's frontman James Murphy for the 48 hours before the concert to the morning after the show.
The footage of the band on stage is among the best you'll see, though the sequences of Murphy in his apartment or walking his dog to stave off his nerves live long in the memory too.
Here we go again: a documentary film surrounding a musician planning to retire after a Madison Square Garden concert... this time it's Jay-Z.
Unsurprisingly, he didn't follow through with his retirement, but this documentary gives an unusually in-depth insight into recording and producing hip-hop, and depicts one of the genre's best live performers at his best.
Concert films were long the preserve of guitar rock bands; this is a welcome change.
An Oscar and Bafta-winning feature from Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson, Summer of Soul uncovers a veritable treasure trove of unseen concert footage from a music festival in Harlem in 1969.
The festival included performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, Sly & the Family Stone and many more and, until Questlove's feature, had been almost entirely written out of history, unlike Woodstock, which took place on the same weekend as one of these concerts.
The best Irish concert film? Perhaps; it's certainly the biggest.
It caught Bono and co at the intersection of their blues, rock, and gospel phases.
Some critics blasted it as an incoherent mess at the time, though many were supportive of the band as they moved into the stratosphere of being the biggest in the world.
From here, it only got bigger for U2, so this is a nice moment along the way up.
This documentary chronicles the last weeks of the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of the United States and culminates in the shocking killing of Meredith Hunter at the infamous Altamont Free Concert in December of that year.
Described by some critics as "equal parts essential and chilling", it is framed in a manner that shows the Stones' music paralleling the end of the free love, counterculture movement of the 1960s. Unforgettable.
It has already emerged as a box office behemoth: Swift directly negotiated her own distribution deals with cinemas, bypassing the traditional means of distribution.
Half a dozen films, including the latest Exorcist sequel and Oscar contender Priscilla, moved release dates to avoid clashing. Such is the size of the Swift movement.
Is it any good? Who knows. Is it a success? 100%. Pre-sale ticket sales were more like those of a Marvel blockbuster than most documentaries.
