Bob Dylan’s Witnesses | A Complete Unknown
When making a film about Bob Dylan, it seems like a logical choice to focus on his early years. The period between 1961, when Dylan arrives in New York and quickly connects with the folk scene in clubs like Wha? or Gaslight, and 1966, when he releases Blonde on Blonde, is the most iconic and best-documented phase of his life – covered in dozens of books, bootlegs, and films. Clinton Heylin’s standard biography dedicates its entire first volume to it; the second covers the next 55 years. Similarly, Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles (of which only the first volume has been published so far) devotes most of its pages to the first half of the ’60s. This is when Dylan becomes famous – the “voice of a generation.” Even now, 60 years later, many people attending his concerts do so to hear Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’; the fact that Dylan no longer performs them live, or that when he does, he delivers them in unrecognizable versions, it’s another story. In a 2006 interview with Jonathan Lethem, Dylan said, “I own the Sixties – who's going to argue with me?” He was joking, but really, who could disagree?
Mihai Iovănel
[:ro]Mihai Iovănel (n. 1979), critic și istoric literar. Este cercetător la Institutul de Istorie și Teorie Literară „G. Călinescu” din București. Cel mai recente volume sunt: Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020 (Editura Polirom, 2021) și Desene mişcătoare. Dialoguri despre critică şi cinema, scris împreună cu criticul de film Andrei Gorzo (Editura Polirom, 2023)[:en]Mihai Iovănel (n. 1979), critic și istoric literar. Este cercetător la Institutul de Istorie și Teorie Literară „G. Călinescu” din București. Cel mai recent volum: Istoria literaturii române contemporane: 1990-2020 (Editura Polirom, 2021).[:]
