Imagine: John Lennon

Imagine: John Lennon (1988) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, assembled by director Andrew Solt from private footage Yoko Ono made available for the first time — home videos, recording sessions, and conversations Lennon never intended as public record.

The film narrates in Lennon's own voice, built from taped interviews and personal writings that track him from Liverpool to the Dakota building in Manhattan. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and David Bowie each appear briefly, adding texture rather than smoothing the portrait into a monument. We get the angry teenager, the songwriter behind "Imagine" and dozens of songs still in constant rotation half a century on, the peace activist, and the father putting his son to bed. These versions of the same man coexist on screen, none of them cancelling the others.

Released eight years after Lennon was killed, this remains the most unvarnished account of who he was. Stream Imagine: John Lennon (1988) online on iFILM.