PINK FLOYD LIVE AT POMPEII

Experience one of rock music’s great cult classic films in its full director’s cut version (2003, 91 minutes) in our Sanctuary! After the film at 7pm, you can enjoy a 3-course Pop-up Dinner featuring Pompeii-inspired cuisine by Great Falls Harvest paired with regional wines curated by wine expert Robert Forman. Tickets to the Dinner are limited and include admission to the film.

“It was to be an anti-Woodstock,……above all, there should be the notion of silence, and the images of Pompeii would speak for themselves with the music. It was something that had to stand on its own: the Floyd and the emptiness of the theatre. Maybe, just maybe, it was like they were playing for the ghosts of the dead.” -Director. Adrien Maben

In October 1971, Pink Floyd gave a spectacular concert to an audience of thousands of ghosts in the volcanically ravaged ruins of Pompeii. Alone in a stone amphitheater (save for the production crew), the prog-rock gods channel “Echoes,” “Saucerful of Secrets,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and more, captured with slowly circling cameras, totemic framing, and even the occasional split screen. The directors cut also features interview snippets covering the recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, the state of the music industry, and oysters.

The live footage of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii was beautifully and hypnotically filmed without an audience over several days and nights at the ancient amphitheater at Pompeii outside of Naples, Italy. Director Adrian Maben captures Pink Floyd at arguably their musical zenith as an emerging underground band on the brink of becoming a global rock phenomenon having released Atom Heart Mother in ’70 and the just released Meddle, with its stoner epic Echoes (Parts I & II)  bookending the film. Interspersed throughout the mesmerizing live footage are casual clips of the band being interviewed in Paris, footage of ancient Pompeii, and added to the ’74 edition of the film, fascinating extended segments of recording sessions of Dark Side of the Moon from ’72 at Abbey Road Studios. Maben’s editing and assembling of these different sources gives the film texture and balance but the overall vibe is a time capsule of psychedelic splendour. The excitement and widespread availability of the film after the 2003 cinema screening and DVD release of this Director’s Cut brought the film to a new audience as well as critical re-appraisal garnering the recognition it deserved. Long a midnight movie cult film for hardcore Floyd fans throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is now regarded as an understated masterpiece.