Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum / Gimme Shelter, 1970

Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum | A rich weekend of films inspired by the exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out / From the Marie and Jose Mugrabi Collection.
Artistic Director: Karin Rywkind Segal

The screenings will be accompanied by introductions from the Museum’s curators and guest lecturers.

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Gimme Shelter

USA, 1970 | Directors: David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin | 91 min., English with Hebrew subtitles

Widely regarded as one of the greatest rock documentaries ever made, Gimme Shelter, follows the Rolling Stones during the final weeks of their 1969 American tour, culminating in the free concert at California’s Altamont Speedway—an event that ended in tragedy and became one of the defining moments in the history of rock culture. Before a crowd of nearly 300,000 people, the Rolling Stones headlined a bill that also featured Tina Turner, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and others. In one of the festival’s most controversial decisions, security was entrusted to members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club. As tensions escalated throughout the day, violence between the bikers and the crowd reached its tragic climax when one of the Hells Angels fatally stabbed Meredith Hunter, a young black concertgoer who stood close to the stage and carried a gun. What began as a celebration of peace, love, and music descended into chaos and bloodshed, becoming, for many, the moment that marked the end of the optimism and innocence of the 1960s.

If Tom Wesselmann’s work embodies the sensual and consumerist promise of the 1960s—color, the body, sexuality, and abundance—Gimme Shelter captures the moment when that promise begins to unravel. Here, the counterculture itself is revealed as another expression of the very culture it sought to oppose: a mass spectacle shaped by commerce and violence. In this sense, the film serves as a somber epilogue to the decade in which many of the works featured in Wesselmann’s exhibition were created.

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The exhibition Tom Wesselmann: All Out, currently on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, provides the point of departure for a weekend film program devoted to America in the 1960s and 1970s. Wesselmann’s work emerged from a visual culture saturated with images of the body, advertising, and consumerism, at a moment when American society was undergoing profound social and cultural change. The program expands the exhibition’s perspective through a selection of films that capture the spirit of the era: the counterculture; growing skepticism toward institutions and authority; shifting ideas about sexuality, femininity, and gender; the struggle for civil rights; and the social and political critique that defined the years of the Vietnam War.

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Note: Film introductions will be in Hebrew.
The number of participants is limited | Advance reservations are required for all participants.
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For more information on “Americana: Cinema Weekend at the Museum” and the full screening program >

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Image: © 1970 Maysles Films