Ginsberg’s Karma

A documentary about the legendary poet Allen Ginsberg and his mythical journey to India in the early 1960s that transformed his perspective on life and his work. Ginsberg traveled to India with Peter Orlovsky, to escape the media pressure of being an icon of the “Beat Generation” and to recover from writer’s block after writing several of the most important poems of the 20th Century including “Howl.” He hoped to re-create the hallucinatory “William Blake” vision that inspired his earlier work and search for a new muse other than drugs. Poet Bob Holman traces the two years Ginsberg spent in India by visiting the places where he stayed and talk with the people he met and influenced, as well as, intimate interviews with Beat poets Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, Anne Waldman, John Giorno and others. The film is inspired by Ginsberg’s collection, “Indian Journals,” and Deborah Baker’s book, “A Blue Hand: The Beats in India.” By discovering Ginsberg’s experiences in India, Bob Holman traces how Ginsberg effected the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and Buddhism in America.

Edited, produced and directed by Ram Devineni.

Format: NTSC / HDV 1080i / Color
Time: 30 minutes
India and USA, English and Bengali (English subtitles)

Status: Jan 2010.