Bed Peace Revisits John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Famous Anti-Vietnam Protests

Briefly not­ed: Yoko Ono has post­ed on YouTube a 70 minute doc­u­men­tary that revis­its John and Yoko’s famous 1969 Bed-Ins, which amount­ed to a peace­ful protest against the Viet­nam War. The film has been added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Below the jump you can find Yoko’s let­ter to view­ers and a sum­ma­ry of the film.


Dear Friends,

In 1969, John and I were so naïve to think that doing the Bed-In would help change the world.
Well, it might have. But at the time, we did­n’t know.

It was good that we filmed it, though.
The film is pow­er­ful now.
What we said then could have been said now.

In fact, there are things that we said then in the film, which may give some encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion to the activists of today. Good luck to us all.

Let’s remem­ber WAR IS OVER if we want it.
It’s up to us, and nobody else.
John would have want­ed to say that.

Love, yoko

Yoko Ono Lennon
Lon­don, UK
August 2011

Film Syn­op­sis

1969 was the year that John & Yoko inten­si­fied their long run­ning cam­paign for World Peace. They approached the task with the same entre­pre­neur­ial exper­tise as an adver­tis­ing agency sell­ing a brand of soap pow­der to the mass­es. John & Yoko’s prod­uct how­ev­er was PEACE, not soft soap, and they were deter­mined to use any slo­gan, event and gim­mick in order to per­suade the World to buy it.

BED PEACE (direct­ed by Yoko & John and filmed by Nic Know­land) is a doc­u­ment of the Mon­tre­al events and fea­tures John & Yoko in con­ver­sa­tion with, amongst oth­ers, The World Press, satirist Al Capp, activist Dick Gre­go­ry, come­di­an Tom­my Smoth­ers, pro­test­ers at Berke­ley’s Peo­ple’s Park, Rab­bi Abra­ham L. Fein­berg, quilt­mak­er Chris­tine Kemp, psy­chol­o­gists Tim­o­thy Leary & Rose­mary Leary, CFOX DJs Charles P. Rod­ney Chan­dler & Roger Scott, pro­duc­er André Per­ry, jour­nal­ist Ritchie York, DJ & Pro­mot­er Mur­ray The K, film­mak­er Jonas Mekas, pub­li­cist Derek Tay­lor & per­son­al assis­tant Antho­ny Faw­cett.


by | Permalink | Comments (7) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (7)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • thanks by post the video. A blend of fresh air and nos­tal­gy in my sun­day morn­ing

  • Loved it! Thank you for shar­ing! Inspi­ra­tional! Give Peace a Chance!

  • Ashley says:

    Such beau­ti­ful peo­ple! Love you Yoko thank you for this!

  • kelly ann says:

    Yoko your so beau­ti­ful, bril­liant, and your love for John was so pure, as was his to you.. inspi­ra­tional. You may not have changed the whole world but you changed and helped to mold my world. For­ev­er grate­ful. Much much love.

  • Ishan das says:

    As long as we oper­ate slaugh­ter hous­es and eat ani­mals, nature’s back­lash will result in war between human beings. We want peace, but until we give up our self­ish­ness and cru­el­ty to oth­er crea­tures we will con­tin­ue to suf­fer in this way. Peo­ple who refuse to kill ani­mals will also refuse to par­tic­i­pate in wars.

  • Mark says:

    Here we again see what John want­ed you to believe. Not the vio­lent, abus­ing wife beat­ing per­son he real­ly was. Great musi­cian, hor­ri­ble per­son.

  • Stacey says:

    thank you Yoko for hav­ing this doc­u­men­tary made and avail­able. Watch­ing this dur­ing the Covid19 pan­dem­ic. this reminds me indi­vid­u­als and their visions make a dif­fer­ence. bless you. Peace and love.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.