YPHSTB Curator: Eager to share

How did you choose your specific theme for the screening?

2026 is the 100th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s birth, and in celebration of this centennial, the Writers Guild at Bloomington has scheduled several events celebrating Ginsberg and the Beats: the You (probably) Haven't Seen This Before screening; several readings; a pop-up exhibit at the Lilly Library; and a screening of several commercial films about Ginsberg and the Beats at the Monroe County Public Library in June. So I guess you could say that the theme chose us.

What excites you about You (probably) Haven't Seen This Before?

It’s such a great series, and what we particularly like about it for this Ginsberg extravaganza is that, unlike contemporary representations of the Beats and the 50s-60s, these films actually are from that era-and plunge us into the zeitgeist of Beatdom— what were people actually like?/ what did they wear?/ what did they buy? / what did they care about? (As opposed to perhaps the romantic or over-simplified picture that popular culture gives us.) The audience for the series is a devoted audience, and we’ve come to know many of the regular participants, so we’re eager to share these films with them, and discuss them after the screening. Also Jamie and Carmel project beautifully.

What is special to you about the medium of film?

Ah- several things— its immediacy; the actual look of celluloid projected on a screen (which, if you haven’t seen it, is like nothing else— absolutely beautiful). For this series, it’s especially important to represent film-as-film— since it was THE medium of the time.  TV was coming in and by the 60s, you could say there was a TV generation— but in the 50s and 60s going to the movies was a major thing, and the belief in the power of film to capture reality was strong (think about the impact and cultural importance of the Zapruder home movie of President Kennedy’s assassination (1963), for example— still the best historical document we have).