City Lights Berlin – San Francisco

Sunday, 27th June 2004, 20.00 hrs                                                       
HAU 2
Hallesches Ufer 32
10963 Berlin

Admission € 7/ € 5

Performing: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (USA)
Moderation: Gerhard Falkner, Eike Gebhardt

The Beat-Generation, with its protagonists Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Lawrence Ferlinghetti was one of the wildest and most influential literary currents of the last century. After a gap of more than 30 years, Ferlinghetti is back for the first time in Germany to be seen and heard. A whole evening of the poesiefestival berlin is dedicated to him and this literary movement, with poems from Ferlinghetti, films of and about Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg and Burroughs, as well as music. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the most important protagonists of this group of ‘angry young men’, is not only himself one of the great poets of the last century, influencing all following generations, but has also as a publisher issued many works of other Beat-authors.

Hardly any literary movement has so showered its time with scandals and literary sensations: Kerouac’s novel ‘On the Road’ and Allen Ginsberg’s legendary poem ‘Howl’ are only two of the most well-known examples. Generations afterwards have fed on what the Beatniks, as they named themselves, prepared: Andy Warhol and the Factory, Patti Smith and Pink Floyd, Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann and German Pop-Literature … all this would not have been possible without the Beatniks. With them one joins a time in which literature and life, intoxication and aesthetic precision, creativity and chaos became one, as scarcely before.

Afterwards, we invite you to the Beatnik Party in the Lyrilklounge, with music and films from the beatnik era, and the Brain Machine.

Project Direction: Michael Gaeb