They are rare, intimate images of John Lennon just before the breakup of the Beatles: He's hunched over a piano writing songs, smoking pot, joking about putting LSD in President Nixon's tea.
Almost four decades after the footage was shot at Lennon's estate in England, his widow is in court, fighting to keep the images private.
World Wide Video LLC, a Lawrence, Mass.-based company, claims it owns the 10 hours of raw footage, but Yoko Ono claims she is the rightful owner. World Wide Video has filed a federal lawsuit against Ono, claiming Ono's attempts to stop the company from publicly showing the footage is a copyright infringement.
At preliminary hearing in the case Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston, arguments on Ono's motion to dismiss were scheduled for May 21. Both sides also agreed not to show the film while the case is working through the courts.
The footage, which has never been shown publicly in its entirety, was shot Feb. 8-10, 1970, by Anthony Cox, Ono's husband before her marriage to Lennon in 1969.
It shows Lennon writing two songs that would later become hits -- “Remember" and “Mind Games" -- and shows him performing the song, “Instant Karma," according to a description in The Boston Globe, which was allowed to view the videotapes for a March 2007 story.
Almost four decades after the footage was shot at Lennon's estate in England, his widow is in court, fighting to keep the images private.
World Wide Video LLC, a Lawrence, Mass.-based company, claims it owns the 10 hours of raw footage, but Yoko Ono claims she is the rightful owner. World Wide Video has filed a federal lawsuit against Ono, claiming Ono's attempts to stop the company from publicly showing the footage is a copyright infringement.
At preliminary hearing in the case Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston, arguments on Ono's motion to dismiss were scheduled for May 21. Both sides also agreed not to show the film while the case is working through the courts.
The footage, which has never been shown publicly in its entirety, was shot Feb. 8-10, 1970, by Anthony Cox, Ono's husband before her marriage to Lennon in 1969.
It shows Lennon writing two songs that would later become hits -- “Remember" and “Mind Games" -- and shows him performing the song, “Instant Karma," according to a description in The Boston Globe, which was allowed to view the videotapes for a March 2007 story.
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