Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder

Filmmaker Christopher Felver pays homage to iconic San Francisco poet-publisher-translator-painter and cultural bellwether Lawrence Ferlinghettti (born 1919), whose long life intertwines with the leading lights of the Beat generation and their impact. A hip documentary—featuring jazz music, snappy editing, and scraps of weird avant-garde movies—Ferlinghetti serves up a fascinating recap of the artist's fertile career. Ferlinghetti's upbringing was fraught with early tragedy: his Italian father died before he was born and his mother suffered a mental breakdown. The unstable woman Ferlinghetti thought was his mother was actually his French aunt, and she soon disappeared, after which the worldly youngster was adopted into an affluent family with a love for poetry. Ferlinghetti seized on Thomas Wolfe as an early role model (although he laments that he didn't write like Wolfe). When he co-founded the legendary City Lights bookstore in San Francisco in 1953, Ferlinghetti also started an imprint that brought into the marketplace such taboo volumes as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which triggered a landmark obscenity trial, placing publisher Ferlinghetti in court to face the heat while poet Ginsburg rode out the controversy traveling abroad. Ferlinghetti also authored volume after volume of writings and poems (including A Coney Island of the Mind). Radicalized by seeing the ruins of Nagasaki as a G.I., Ferlinghetti also advocated leftist and socialist causes, preached mistrust of government and big business, and—to avoid being politically compromised—refused support from the National Endowment of the Arts. Additional interviewees here include Billy Collins, Amiri Baraka, and Dennis Hopper. DVD extras include Ferlinghetti's recitation of his poem “History of the Airplane.” Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)