Film Forum Spotlights Leonard Cohen, Small-Town Ohio

The promoters for the third Isle of Wight pop festival in 1970 thought they'd build a bit on their successful draw of 150,000 the previous year. They got 600,000 or more. Despite the three-pound entrance fee for a weekend concert with Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Miles Davis, Procol Harum, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, hordes camped out on a bluff overlooking the festival, watched for free, and occasionally set things on fire.

35-year-old Leonard Cohen was one of the last acts, roused in the middle of the night, and wearing what look like pajamas under his trench coat. Murray Lerner's live footage is more in the way of a concert film than a documentary, though he cuts away briefly to get context from Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Kris Kristofferson. The best thing would be to see it in a crowded theater, savoring all the hits Cohen had come up with before 1970, enveloped in a darkness that is both the beginning and end of something. Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight, 1970: Friday, March 12, 9 p.m., Saturday March 13, 9 p.m.

Also opening Friday at the Forum is Bill and Ross Turner's mesmerizing 45365, named after the Zip code of a small Ohio town. Too improvisationally loose for "documentary" to sum up, the film has been called a "symphony," "tapestry," and "mosaic." The camera dogs its way around town, sniffing out what's interesting. Although it's frequently distracted from following this or that person (the judge running an election campaign, a police officer out on call, doings in the barber shop, an alcoholic with one foot on and off the wagon), the camera in its detours through town keeps stumbling upon community epiphanies that anyone who's fled to the big city will remember keenly. It's noteworthy that in a town where everyone knows everyone else's business, one of the most cutting things you can do is not refer to someone by their name. 45365: Friday, March 12-Thursday, March 18 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.