TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
TCM’s “End of Summer Tour,” which started showing concert and musical movies and documentaries last Friday, concludes tonight with one last festive and/or festival night of programming. And what a night. The 1968 documentary Monterey Pop, about the 1967 music festival that changed the Sixties, starts things off at 8 p.m. ET. Whose careers were pushed into high gear by that astounding gathering of musical stylists? Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix (pictured). The Who. Ravi Shankar. Simon & Garfunkel. Jefferson Airplane. The Animals. Then, at 9:30 p.m. ET, TCM presents Woodstock: The Director’s Cut, the 1994 expanded re-edit of the 1970 movie about the 1969 music festival that both ended and exemplified the entire decade. Hendrix was there, too, famously, as were The Who, the Airplane, Joplin, and others who also had been at Monterey, including Country Joe and the Fish and Canned Heat. Compare and contrast. That Director’s Cut takes until 1:30 a.m. ET, but that’s when the 1964 Beatles classic movie musical, A Hard Day’s Night, shows up. Directed by Richard Lester, it’s an absolute cinematic and rock-movie classic – and, for me, the highlight of this final night of the “End of Summer Tour.” But TCM didn’t save the best till last, because it finishes the festival with one last movie musical salvo: At 3:15 a.m. ET, a showing of 1965’s Go Go Mania, basically a collection of what would come to be known as music videos: in this case, predominantly lip-synched performances of rock groups presenting their current hits. The artists in question, at this midpoint of the Sixties? The Animals, Peter and Gordon, Herman’s Hermits, and Billy J. Kramer.
PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET
Elizabeth Barret and photographer Wendy Ewald collaborated on this new edition of P.O.V., which tells her story of getting others to tell their stories – and what a story it is. In the 1970s, she taught elementary school at three schools in Letcher County, Kentucky, and armed her young students with cameras, dispatching them with orders to photograph themselves and their rural and mostly poor Appalachian homes, communities and lifestyles. A decade later, Ewald published some of those results in her well-received book collection, Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians.And now, four decades after that, she and Barret present this updated TV version, which, sort of like Michael Apted’s Up documentary series, not only presents some of those works, but locates and interviews some of those former young photographers, many of whom are now parents with kids and grandkids of their own. Check local listings.