ruth weiss: One More Step West Is The Sea

  • A woman in a sleeveless dress speaking on the speakerphone before she is to deliver a speech to the crowds of people around her stand
  • Now an old woman (Russ Weiss) with green-dyed hair singing in the microphone, some sheets in her hands, as a trumpeter and a cellist assist her from behind, a seated long-haired man playing on a log

Q&A immediately following the screening with director Thomas Antonic, Tate Swindell (Unrequited Records),
plus ruth weiss’s band members Rent Romus
& Doug O’ Connor!

From Berlin and Vienna in the 1930s; from New York to Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s; ruth weiss, one of the great female Beat poets, has written, performed, painted, and filmed the fact that for her, ‘one more step west is the sea …’ In her 90s, her life is a grand collage that transcends the Beat. She is the cosmic refugee among the ecstatic memories of counter-culture. Beat scholar and award winning poet Thomas Antonic traces weiss’s pioneering art and her world without boundaries in his feature length documentary debut as a film director.

Runtime
1h 31m
Year
2021
Director
Thomas Antonic
Format
DCP
Country
Austria
Language
English
Categories
Featured