Runtime 89 m • NR
Directed by Jonathan Lee
Admission: $6

Paul Goodman was once so ubiquitous in the American zeitgeist that he merited a “cameo” in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Author of legendary bestseller Growing Up Absurd (1960), Goodman was also a poet, 1940s out queer (and family man), pacifist, visionary, co-founder of Gestalt therapy—and a moral compass for many in the burgeoning counterculture of the ‘60s.

Paul Goodman Changed My Life immerses you in an era of high intellect (that heady, cocktail-glass juncture that Mad Men has so effectively exploited) when New York was peaking culturally and artistically; when ideas, and the people who propounded them, seemed to punch in at a higher weight class than they do now.

Using a treasure trove of archival multimedia—selections from Goodman's poetry (read by Garrison Keillor and Edmund White); quotes from Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Noam Chomsky; plentiful footage of Goodman himself; plus interviews with his family, peers and activists—director/producer Jonathan Lee and producer/editor Kimberly Reed (Prodigal Sons) have woven together a rich portrait of an intellectual heavyweight whose ideas are long overdue for rediscovery.

MEET THE DIRECTOR

Jonathan Lee served as producer of the Fear of Disclosure Project, a series of videos that explore the act of revealing that one is HIV+ or has AIDS, which began with a video by the late Phil Zwickler and David Wojnarowicz. Under Lee?s direction, the project produced and distributed (In)Visible Women, by Ellen Spiro and Marina Alvarez; Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret), by Marlon T. Riggs; and Out in Silence & Not a Simple Story, by Christine Choy. From 1995–2003, Lee was the founder/director of the Maine Speakout Project, a statewide organization that trained and deployed volunteer speakers to share their personal experiences as sexual minority Mainers with mainstream groups throughout the state. In 2003, Lee returned to New York City to begin working on Paul Goodman Changed My Life. He is presently developing a non-profit retreat center, The Machiah Center, for activists and scholars, in New Gloucester, Maine.

Click here to learn more at the official website

Watch the trailer here:

"It has a passionate, almost prophetic sense of the impact
that a writer and thinker can have on his times and the future..."
—AO Scott, New York Times

Coming up
March 9: Albatross • March 16: Pina • March 23: Into the Abyss • March 30: Tomboy • April 6: Albert Nobbs • April 13: Salt of Life • April 20: Something Ventured • April 27: Norwegian Wood