Ruth Weiss

Anjelica Huston narrates this exploration of the spectacularly dreamlike world of Salvador Dali’s protégé, Steven Arnold, and his strikingly creative and influential body of work filled with occult rituals, Hollywood camp, and surrealist art nouveau whimsy. Taken from more than 70 hours of original and archival footage, including rare scenes of Holly Woodlawn, director Vishnu Dass digs deeply into the decadent countercultural and inspiring life of this unheralded multimedia artist of the queer community.

In a life that has spanned 92 creative years, ruth weiss is one of the most influential writers of the Beat Generation. Born to a Jewish family during the rise of Nazism, as a 10-year-old refugee, she escaped to the United States. ruth became a Jazz troubadour exemplifying the zeitgeist of Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco. The film further highlights ruth weiss' electrifying and intimate poetry with breathtaking images of exquisite modern dance, art, animation, and music to embody her oeuvre. This film documents not only weiss' gift to humanity but archives significant historical moments in our world's social and literary movements. As a contemporary of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Kerouac, she innovated poetry to jazz.

A series of erotic vignettes and sexual imagery (mostly of the gay variety) are presented courtesy of The Cockettes (a gay/drag performance art ensemble of late 60s/early 70s San Francisco).

Although best known for his photography, Steven Arnold also wrote, designed, and directed several groundbreaking visionary films, The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique being the first. Stuart Comer of the Tate Modern (London) said of Mannique: “a macabre, decadent work presenting mannequins and models that travel through strange universes toward possible self-discovery.” Brooklyn-based artist and writer Kate Wadkins in a recent online article observed: “Arnold’s films are dream-like visions of androgynous beings. Their narratives are modern-day fairy tales and reveries about gender — all through the lens of an acid trip.”

From Berlin and Vienna in the 1930s; from New York to Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in the '50s, '60s, and '70s; ruth weiss has written, performed, painted, and filmed the fact that for her "one more step west is the sea..." The life of this legendary Beat poet and innovator of Jazz & Poetry is a grand collage that transcends the Beat. She is the cosmic refugee among the ecstatic memories of counter-culture. In his feature-length directorial debut, Beat scholar and award-winning poet Thomas Antonic traces weiss' pioneering art and her world without boundaries.