One to One: John & Yoko

The One to One Concerts, featured here with remixed concert audio in IMAX with Laser and produced by Sean Lennon, saw two iconic artists perform alongside The Plastic Ono Band, Elephant’s Memory and other guests. This 16mm footage is the centrepiece of Kevin Macdonald’s (Marley, Whitney) riveting account of John and Yoko’s arrival in New York, drawing on incredible archive footage and audio recordings that capture the couple at their creative collaborative peak.

On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One Benefit Concert, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Director Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary takes that epic musical event and uses it as the starting point to recreate 18 defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple were newly arrived in the United States – living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television. The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the tube: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest – ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV.

Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, One to One: John & Yoko also includes a wealth of never-before-seen material, including home movies and numerous phone call recordings of John and Yoko to offer a unique take on a seminal time in the lives of one of music’s most famous couples.

This special preview screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with director Kevin Macdonald.

See the BFI Southbank release of One to One: John & Yoko.