John Lennon and Yoko Ono are the subject of a new documentary, One to One: John & Yoko, which opens exclusively in IMAX theaters on Friday.
The film features a treasure trove of archival material of the couple in New York in the early ’70s. The film’s director, Kevin Macdonald, tells ABC Audio the footage helped him realize the story he wanted to tell.
“I thought, actually, this is gonna be a film about the times,” he says, “about this year which John and Yoko spent living in New York in this tiny apartment in the West Village, as much as it is a sort of story of just them.”
That archival material includes audio recordings the couple made of themselves when they feared the FBI was listening in to their phone calls, and Macdonald says it gives fans a new perspective on the rock star couple.
“I think there’s something just about hearing their voices in this very casual way when they’re not … being interviewed,” he says. “I think you get a different feeling for who these two people are as people.”
Macdonald notes the real “center of the film” is footage of John and Yoko’s One to One concerts, which took place at Madison Square Garden in August 1972; they were the only full-length concerts Lennon gave after The Beatles‘ 1970 breakup.
“We had access for the first time to this concert,” he says, noting everything else in the documentary is “really giving context to that concert.”
And Macdonald hopes that after seeing the film, fans “feel like they get more intimate with John than they ever have before” and get to appreciate him as a performer.
“I think that you can’t underestimate how rare and special it is to see John performing live,” he says.
(Video includes uncensored profanity.)
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