Christopher Felver

The poet and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is among the world's living monuments to arts and letters. For well over a half century, Ferlinghetti helped shape the currents of poetry and literature with his forceful engagement with society and an ideological position that often found him at odds with the political currents of his day. Ferlinghetti's quiet, behind the scenes demeanor and disarming mien may have assuaged, or even fooled, certain opponents, while in reality he was a literary mercenary, a rebel at the forefront of our own cultural revolution.

The poet and writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an iconic presence in the world of arts and letters. For well over half a century he has helped shape the currents of poetry and literature through his forceful engagement with society. Armed with an ideological position that often found him at odds with the political dogma of his day, Ferlinghetti became the best selling poet of the modern era, a literary mercenary and a rebel at the forefront of a cultural revolution.

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

An artist and critic, there was a considerable duality to Donald Judd (1928-1994) - he was at once a man of intellectual rigor and a multi-disciplinary conceptualist who deftly moved towards a new minimalism. In 1971, he relocated from New York, to the prairies of Presidio County in Southern Texas, twenty miles from the Mexican border.

Christopher Felver's enormously engaging documentary is a serious and powerful portrait of San Francisco's legendary poet, painter and City Lights publisher. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been a vital creative force in the American literary scene since the 1950's when he arrived in San Francisco and began to write his infamous poems, including A Coney Island of the Mind.