Product Description

The life & work of allen ginsberg the greatest of the beat generation poets is put in focus in this film. Studio: New Yorker Films Video Release Date: 07/17/2007 Run time: 84 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34316 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-07-17
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 480 minutes

Amazon.com
The re-release of Jerry Aronson's biopic, The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, timed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of "Howl," suits this wonderful documentary and proves Ginsberg central to all radical artistic and political movements of the past 60 years. The feature-length film, segmented by decade, provides ample footage of Ginsberg's life; but extras added into this package, including footage of his memorial and 35 interviews with artists inspired by the visionary poet--from Beck to Lawrence Ferlinghetti--solidify Ginsberg as an American cultural icon. The film unravels Ginsberg's obsession for life and death around his mother's nervous breakdown and his father's affinity for poetry. Interviews with Ginsberg from each decade, both amongst his Beat friends like Burroughs and Huncke, and later with talk show hosts William Buckley and Dick Cavett, show the author's progression from sexual politics in the '40s and '50s to the "politics of ecstasy" in the '60s and '70s, when he founded the Flower Power movement with Tim Leary, and later, Naropa Institute. Ample footage of Ginsberg's stepmother provides a sensitive outsider's opinion on how he blossomed into one of the most spontaneous minds of the century. The film transcends simple Ginsberg descriptions by framing his life with historical happenings to contextualize the author's words and actions. The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg reminds the viewer that there is no better example of an artist devoted to a life of letters, activism, and idealism than the original beatnik. --Trinie Dalton

Customer Reviews

NEW YORK TIMES
The film at 85 minutes is amazing. The extras at over 6.5 hours are incredible. This DVD set is a source of all things Beat that I will be looking back at for years. It is beautifully arranged so that you can watch many extras on the same disc as the feature and also watch 35 interviews on Disc 2 including so many friends of Allen who also happened and happen to be cultural phenomenon's in their own right including Baez, Beck, Bono, Brakhage, Burroughs, Depp, Glass, Hoffman, Kesey, Leary, McCartney, Sonic Youth, Ono, Patti Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, Andy Warhol and so many more!

Also, Allen reads poetry to the camera for over 30 minutes, talks with Neal Cassidy in the basement of City Light in 1965 for almost 20 minutes, and reminisces with William Burroughs in 1984 at Naropa in Boulder, CO.

I can go on and on but this heartfelt collection made me want to read more of Ginsberg's poetry and remember a man who was truly a pacifist and helped make the world a better and more peaceful place. How we need that today!!!!!Here is a recent New York Times review on the DVD:

"The New York Times"
Jerry Aronson has augmented his crisp, straightforward 1993 documentary portrait of the poet Allen Ginsberg with six hours of extra material for this double-disc release, which now makes it a scholarly resource as well as a remarkably clearheaded study of a singularly complex individual.

Mr. Aronson's film follows Ginsberg from his middle-class upbringing in New Jersey through the media explosion that was the Beat movement, his role in the flowering youth movement of the 1960s and his last years as a devoted Buddhist and political activist. Those interviewed range from close friends and family members to artists whose relationship to Ginsberg was more remote (Beck, Bono and Johnny Depp, while the footage Mr. Aronson has gathered includes lengthy excerpts from Ginsberg's 1998 memorial tribute at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Ginsberg and Bob Dylan visiting Jack Kerouac's grave, a 1965 reading with Neal Cassady at the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and sequences from Jonas Mekas's touching record of Ginsberg's wake, "Scenes From Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit."

Kaddish & cosmos
There are two features of Ginsberg's personality that come through over and over in this intriguing documentary: he was a deeply wounded man, and he was a deeply lovable one. The two were obviously connected: Ginsberg's wounds made him both vulnerable and compassionate. They could also make him rage against a world that condoned war and injustice, and all of these sides of him come through in his poetry.

Ginsberg's ur-wound was the tragedy of his mother, a remarkable woman who sadly suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was in and out of institutions during Ginsberg's youth, and finally died in one. As a boy, Ginsberg was frequently charged with her care. As his stepmother says in the film, he was exposed to way too much for a young boy to take in. His feelings of helplessness, frustration, impatience, love, guilt, and fear in the face of his mom's illness and increasingly bizarre behavior marked him for life. Thankfully, his relationship with his father Louis, a lyric poet, was one of tenderness, mutual respect, and deep love.

Ginsberg's unhappy relationship with his mother, as well as his genesis from beat poet to cosmic poet to Buddhist poet to grand old man of American poetry is tracked in the film. Especially welcome are the long and marvelous clips of Ginsberg reading his poetry: long sections of "Howl," all of "Kaddish," and others, sometimes put in music. There's also a clip from Ginsberg's appearance on Buckley's "Firing Line," in which the two men stood one another down. Lots of vintage still photography and cinema featuring the beat poets round out the documentary.

The one thing missing in the film was more than a brief mention of Ginsberg's lifelong relationship with Peter Orlovsky. Ginsberg does say at one point, quite touchingly, that he and Peter made life vows to one another, and a rather vague reference to Orlovsky's later mental and alcohol troubles is made. But the relationship is for the most part passed over in silence.

A good film, both for fans of Ginsberg's poetry and those who know it only by hearsay. A fitting Kaddish for a man who's heart and imagination stretched cosmically.

An absorbing look at "The Beat Generation" of the '50's and '60's.
No study of the 1950's and 1960's cultural revolution in the USA would be complete without the poetry and bohemian life-look at poet Allen Ginsberg and those of "The Beat Generation." The 1960's just didn't happen; the groundwork was laid in the 1950's with the writers and the poets and the musicians who began to eschew The Establishment, embrace peace, do drugs, sexually experiment, and put it all down into their art. This film is currently showing on ON DEMAND and I was fortunate enough to see all 480 minutes of it. Being born in 1955, I learned a lot, frankly way more, than I myself ever knew about the times. I have yet to see a more complete and absorbing film chronicalling the soul and heart of the Era. Highly recommended.
A nice complimentary film to this one would be Across the Universe (Two-Disc Special Edition), but simply as an aid with some music.