Product Details

• Actors: Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Amiri Baraka
• Directors: Costanzo Allione
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Studio: Mystic Fire
• VHS Release Date: November 10, 1998
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303503543
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #654,066 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beats go to summer camp, August 2, 2001

By 

Algernon D'Ammassa (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds: Allen Ginsburg [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This video takes you on a whirlwind visit to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Colorado. It feels like a truthful, unfaked portrait. We have no host pointing things out and explaining.

The skill of this documentary is that the camera's perspective is wide enough that we can just follow and watch. We are shown classes at Naropa, which range from formal meditation sessions to anarchic lectures with Gregory Corso. We attend performances at the school, and an anti-nuclear demonstration where Corso and Allen Ginsberg read their own works and many people are arrested. Ginsberg, the late great poet and one of our last gentlemen, orients us a little bit - like a busy host at a wonderful party. Tim Leary and William Burroughs and Anne Waldman gossip about art, spirituality, and one another. Amiri Baraka critiques his friends and also reads his work.

We may linger overlong on some things - like Ginsberg singing "Father Death" tunelessly while accompanying himself on a squeeze box, but even there we are edified when we see Baraka looking on and, with us, a little bored. The documentary truly has a perspective of its own and shows us some legendary people without a speck of awe.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A look through Ginsbergs' camera. Insightful., March 2, 2000

By 

Adam Stubbs (U.S.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This video is a rarely known about treasure for beat fans. The footage was shot by Ginsberg himself with a tender, direct and exciting tone, much like his own writing. Watch the godheads of the beat movement in apartment conversations and poetry readings.