D.A. Pennebaker’s Voluminous Music Movies, from ‘Don’t Look Back’ to Depeche Mode

D.A.

Pennebaker had already been making documentaries for 12 years when he got a historic assignment in 1965 to document Bob Dylan at his most mercurial.

Once “Don’t Look Back” was released in 1967, followed a year later by “Monterey Pop,” Pennebaker’s path as popular music’s preeminent documentarian was set — or at least the biggest part of his legacy was, since he continued to take on dozens of socially conscious, non-musical subjects, to not always quite as much attention.For decades, the patina of those two films attracted musicians from John Lennon to Depeche Mode.

Some were shorts or made for television, and many got held up over issues that saw them being released years or even decades after they were shot.

Pennebaker was famous for skewing toward the grittiest, least slick end of the scale in his concert coverage, favoring spontaneous 16mm shoots that were the very opposite of

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