One To One: John & Yoko

Directed by Kevin Macdonald
Starring John Lennon, Yoko Ono

On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One Benefit Concert, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Director Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO takes that epic musical event and uses it as the starting point to recreate eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States— living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television.

The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the tube: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest — ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV.

Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO also includes a wealth of never-before-seen material, including home movies and numerous phone call recordings of John and Yoko to offer a unique take on a seminal time in the lives of one of music’s most famous couples.