ABOUT DIANE DI PRIMA
Diane di Prima (1934-2020) was a poet, writer, publisher and playwright whose work has been associated with the Beat movement. Born and raised in New York City, she associated with poets such as Amiri Baraka, Jack Kerouac and Frank O’Hara, co-editing The Floating Bear magazine with Baraka in the 60s and co-founding the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre. Throughout her life in New York and later out West, both her sense of anarchic limitlessness and her zeal for collaboration guided her work.
In 2002, Sophie Constantinou and Bill Weir interviewed Diane di Prima and recorded her recollections of those bohemian days of shared art and radical expression in New York and eventually San Francisco. These moments were captured in a series of short films catalyzed by Elmslie. His vision was to illustrate the artistic spirit of and collaborations among American writers, poets and artists from the late 50s to today.
Project Team
Director: Sophie Constantinou
Executive Producer: Kenward Elmslie
Producers: William Blackburn Weir, Margaret Weir
Editor: Laurie Lezin-Schmidt
Archival footage courtesy of the Prelinger Archive