The world of the ‘Beat Generation’, a core group of writers that appeared to define a free-loving and free-flowing period of creativity during the 1950s and 1960s, has been celebrated and reflected on over the years, but how many of us actually do sense what the context and contribution of writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs mean in the modern millennial context.

Books like ON THE ROAD and NAKED LUNCH have been filmed by modern film-makers like David Cronenberg, but how many of us really get into the meaning of the words within the original source material.

Melody C. Miller is a film-maker who attempts to put everything into perspective with her brand-new documentary RUTH WEISS: THE BEAT GODDESS, a celebration of one of the key innovators who pioneered the art of ‘Jazz Poetry’ and whom recently passed away at the age of 92.

Weiss was in fact Jewish and European-born in Berlin in 1928 and became one of the lucky people who managed to flee the tyranny of Nazism by moving with her family to Innsbruck and the Netherlands, before emigrating to the USA at Chicago, where she gained encouragement from the teachers in a Catholic School for her writing.

Her American adventure and talents would lead her to the fog-filled hub of San Francisco, where she would meet the likes of Kerouac and become one of the key figures in the ‘Beat’ movement (she reflects on Kerouac and the possibility that if she had kept some of his material, she could have been a millionaire by now).

The documentary is informative and thanks to the presence of Weiss telling the story amidst a mix of animation and archive footage and photographs, it is a film that will attempt to enlighten people and guide them into what her work and her contribution represents across the board.

At a nice and tight sixty-eight minutes, it gives everyone just enough and can also be used as a nice introduction if you want to learn more about Weiss and many of her contemporaries.

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