And when I die, I won’t stay dead

Description

Contemporaries and devotees recall brilliant but largely unheralded Beat poet Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) in this rich documentary tribute to a singular individual. Rather than present a chronological recounting of his subject’s life, CalArts professor and filmmaker Billy Woodberry takes a looser approach that incorporates glimpses of the struggles and changes occurring in America during Kaufman’s active years. The director introduces the poet during his days as a mainstay among the Beat writers in San Francisco’s North Beach, opening a window back in time to that heady era with a free-flowing collage of black-and-white footage and still photographs, underscored by jazz and city soundscapes. Supplementing the archival material are interviews with Kaufman’s contemporaries, poets A.D. Winans and Jack Hirschman, as well as historian Gerald Horne and writer, editor and publisher Raymond Foye. The film also charts the drifting course that took Kaufman to San Francisco; from his childhood in New Orleans, as the son of a German Jewish father and a Black Catholic mother, to the years following WWII when he organized for the National Maritime Union. Woodberry dips memorably and meaningfully into each of these periods, sketching in the background of this enigmatic man. If one subscribes to the adage that a person is not really dead until he’s no longer remembered by the living, then thanks to this vivid cinematic portrait, Bob Kaufman’s titular declaration is emphatically true. —Laura Henneman

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