The One to One benefit show, which also featured Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack, raised money for residents of Staten Island's Willowbrook State School for children with intellectual disabilities. Lennon and Ono were inspired to participate after a damning exposé from Geraldo Rivera revealed the school’s horrifying and abusive conditions, Rolling Stone report.
Directed by Kevin Macdonald, One to One centers around Lennon’s only full-length show after leaving the Beatles. He and Ono put on the One to One benefit show at Madison Square Garden on August 30th, 1972. The film explores the 18 months leading up to the show, when the couple shared an apartment in Greenwich Village and found themselves heavily immersed in American television.
As seen in the film’s trailer, Macdonald pulls heavily from archival footage of the couple during this time. Alongside never-before-seen footage, One to One features newly remixed and produced music by the couple’s only son together Sean Ono Lennon.
One to One was first announced last May and premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August. It was also an official selection at Sundance earlier this year.
One to One is not the only new documentary to chronicle the couple’s relationship and politics in the early Seventies. Daytime Revolution was released in October and took a close look at their residency on The Mike Douglas Show in 1972 where the invited guests like Ralph Nader, George Carlin, Yippie founder Jerry Rubin and Black Panther Bobby Seale to join them on-air.
“I am personally thrilled to be back with the Magnolia and HBO teams to be giving One to One: John & Yoko the ambitious theatrical release that I always dreamed of for this film,” said Macdonald, whose filmography also includes 1999’s Oscar-winning One Day in September, 2012’s Marley and 2018’s Whitney. “This is a movie about music and love and politics and about immersing yourself in the year of 1972 — a period in time that feels uncannily like the world we are currently inhabiting. And more than anything else I’m grateful to Sean Lennon and Mercury Studios for entrusting the incredible One to One concert to me.”
