YOKO ONO, John Lennon’s widow, allowed a team of film-makers to use previously unseen footage of the Beatle for a documentary that is receiving its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
Twenty-six years after Lennon was shot dead outside his home in New York, she gave them access to material from unfinished and unreleased films, home movies and private wedding photographs.
She said: “Of all the documentaries that have been made about John, this is the one he would have loved.”
Written, directed and produced by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, The US vs John Lennon focuses on the decade from 1966 and Lennon’s role as an anti-war activist, and is set against a period dominated by the Vietnam War, civil rights and Watergate.
Mr Leaf said that it showed the US Government’s efforts to deport Lennon. He said: “It’s definitely a forgotten story. The vast majority of people who lived through that period and knew something about the Lennon case haven’t thought about it in a really long time. For anyone born since then, it’s probably an unknown story.”