Current and past Big Sur folk festivals documented on film.

Two documentaries summoning the magic of Big Sur music festivals, spanning decades, were shown in Los Angeles last week.

The premiere of Alex Klein’s Festival in the Forest – an hour-long account of the Folk Yeah festival at the Fernwood campgrounds on Sept. 8, 2008 – looks like it took place in the ’60s; there are free flowing sun dresses and wild hair, Frisbees flying, public displays of affection and haphazard spinning and twirling.

As in D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop, Klein makes it clear that the cultural scene and politics of the time are just as important as the music.

One festivalgoer – who drove his sherbet VW Winnebago from Orange County – cites the upcoming presidential election and the importance of change.

Klein also recognizes the budding talent in front of him.

With each band, the makeshift stage overflows with vibrant music, eccentric costumes and organic surroundings.

During Megapuss’s performance – featuring freak-folkie Devendra Banhart – Klein goes beyond the Woodstock split screen and uses a quad-screen to capture each band member doing their own thing.

The atmosphere is as laid back as the Big Sur River that runs through the campsite. The musicians meander around and watch the other bands with the same excitement as the audience.

“If I don’t hear a lot of lovemaking tonight I’m going to be very disappointed,” says Victoria Legrand of Baltimore-based dream pop duo Beach House.

Bay Area hipsters Port O’Brien distribute pots and pans to the crowd and encourage percussion contribution on one of their tunes.

One of the most memorable acts is bossa nova folksters Little Joy in one of their first live performances. Binki Shapiro’s voice on the slinky “Unattainable” delicately surpasses the vintage appeal of Norah Jones. And on “Brand New Start,” Rodrigo Amarante looks like Raul Julia and sounds like an old school, Portuguese lounge singer.

In one of the Silver Jews’ last live performances, front man David Berman grumpily roams the stage as he belts out pensive tales while his gorgeous wife Cassie stoically plays bass beside him.

“[The festival] was a beautiful moment in space and time and a zeitgeist of 2008,” Klein said after the screening. “It felt like being on the cusp of something new.”

Strangely, Baird Bryant and Johanna Demetrakas’s 1971 Celebration at Big Sur doesn’t feel outdated when paired with Festival in the Forest. “I saw a lot of parallels [with Festival in the Forest] that surprised and delighted me,” producer Carl Gottlieb said in his introduction of Celebration at Big Sur.

The film begins with Joan Baez, draped with a red poncho, belting out a poignant version of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” Only a pool separates Baez and the audience, and immediately behind Baez a cliff stretches down to the Pacific.

Highlights include an infamous altercation between Stephen Stills and a heckler in the audience who accuses him of becoming disconnected with the people. Stills apologizes to the audience, then plays a brilliant, solo-acoustic rendition of “4+20.” And Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s performance of “Down by the River” rattles many ribcages.

Celebration is also about more than the music – and reveals it wasn’t just hippies who are fed up with “the man”: The festival’s toothless cook, obviously not a part of the counterculture scene, says he has a dream of getting a house “far away from any hassle.”

FESTIVAL IN THE FOREST executive producer Britt Govea plans on taking the film on tour and featuring one of the festival bands live at each screening. For information visit www.festivalintheforestfilm.com