patti smith | dream of life

A Documentary Film by Steven Sebring

Shot over 11 years by renowned fashion photographer Steven Sebring, “Patti Smith: Dream of Life” is an intimate portrait of the legendary rocker, poet and artist. Following Smith’s personal reflections over a decade, the film explores her many art forms and the friends and poets who inspired her — William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Robert Mapplethorpe and Michael Stipe. She emerges as a crucial, contemporary link between the Beats, punks and today’s music. Shot in lush, dark tones, featuring rare performance clips and narrated by the artist herself, “Patti Smith: Dream of Life” is an impressionistic journal of a multi-faceted artist that underscores her unique place in American culture.

“Patti Smith: Dream of Life”

Presents Evocative Portrait of the Legendary Rocker and Artist, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009, at 9 p.m. in Special Presentation on PBS’ POV

Smith was both participant and witness to a seminal scene in American culture; film portrays her friendships and work with Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan.

“Created over a heroic 11 years … a lovely … first feature. … Mr. Sebring creates a structure for the film in which past and present seem to flow effortlessly and ceaselessly into each other.” — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Shot over 11 years by acclaimed fashion photographer Steven Sebring, “Patti Smith: Dream of Life” is a remarkable plunge into the life, art, memories and philosophical reflections of the legendary rocker, poet and artist. Sometimes dubbed the “godmother of punk” — a designation justified by clips of her early rage-fueled performances — Smith was much more than that when she broke through with her 1975 debut album, Horses. A poet and visual artist as well as a rocker, she befriended and collaborated with some of the brightest lights of the American counterculture, an often testosterone-driven scene to which she brought a swagger and fierceness all her own.

In “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” the artist’s memories of these times, and of a period of domestic happiness and the tragedies that brought her back to the stage, attain an intense, hypnotic lyricism, much like that of her own songs. The two-hour film has its American broadcast premiere in a POV (Point of View) special presentation on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009, at 9 p.m. on PBS, concluding POV’s 22nd season. (Check local listings.) American television’s longest-running independent documentary series, POV is the recipient of a Special News and Documentary Emmy for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.

“Patti Smith: Dream of Life,” winner of a 2008 Sundance Film Festival Award for Excellence in Cinematography, is a riveting, intimate telling of Smith’s long, strange trip. She may not be the only middle-class Jersey girl to have made the leap to New York City in pursuit of artistic dreams, but she may be the only one to have emerged — and survived — as a multifaceted poet, artist and rock star. Through performance footage, interviews, poems, paintings, photographs and Smith’s voice-over reminiscences, “Dream of Life” reveals a complicated, charismatic personality wrestling with the paradoxes of being an artist in America and of being a woman in a male-dominated music scene.

Smith also wrestles with the tragedies — the deaths of her husband and brother — that brought her back to New York and to performing. Layering Smith’s words over innovative camera techniques, the film explores how one woman discovered herself through music, how she survived tragedy, how she raised two children and how she endeavors in a quest for peace, for herself and for the world.

In telling Smith’s story, Sebring plumbs the history of several important cultural movements. Smith’s collaborations and close friendships with poets William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and musicians Bob Dylan and Michael Stipe reveal the links that make her a bridge between the Beats, the punk movement and musicians of today. The colorful moments in “Dream of Life” are plenty: Smith as an angelic street urchin, reciting “A Prayer for New York” in footage from 1975; a jam session with her 1970s collaborator, playwright Sam Shepard; Smith reading an Allen Ginsberg poem at Ginsberg’s funeral; and Smith hanging out on the beach with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Shot in lush, textured 16mm film, “Dream of Life” is a vibrant chronicle of rock history and the story of a bold woman who would not be denied on stage or off. It is also the story of a survivor whose creative intelligence thrives more than 30 years after the world first became aware of her.

“A few weeks after I met Patti in 1995, she invited me to see her perform at Irving Plaza in New York City,” says Sebring. “I was completely blown away; she wasn’t the person I had met at her home in Detroit. She had been this really sweet, almost innocent woman. And then at Irving Plaza, she was raging, spitting music and spewing poetry. It was fantastic. After the show, I asked her, ‘Has anybody ever filmed you?’ I didn’t know at the time that there was so little documentation of her aside from concert footage.

“I kept shooting as Patti’s life kept changing; over the years, we’ve become like brother and sister,” Sebring says. “They call her the punk poet prophet. Well, I’m one of her soldiers, or one of her messengers. I want to turn people on to Patti Smith.”

“Patti Smith: Dream of Life” is a production of Clean Socks and THIRTEEN.

Credits: Director: Steven Sebring; Co-producers: Steven Sebring, Margaret Smilow, Scott Vogel; Cinematographers: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring; Editors: Angelo Corrao, Lin Polito; Executive Producers: Steven Sebring, Margaret Smilow; Sound Design: Margaret Crimmins, Greg Smith, Dog Bark Sound. Running Time: 116:46

Awards and Festivals: 2008: Official Selection, Sundance Film Festival – Excellence in Cinematography Award; Full Frame Documentary Film Festival; Philadelphia Film Festival; Seattle Film Festival; Washington, D.C. Film Festival; Provincetown Film Festival; Milan International Film Festival; Berlin International Film Festival; Jerusalem Film Festival. (For a complete list, visit www.dreamoflifethemovie.com.)

New York public media company WNET.ORG is a pioneering provider of television and web content. The parent of THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and Creative News Group, WNET.ORG brings such acclaimed broadcast series and websites as Worldfocus, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Charlie Rose, Wide Angle, Secrets of the Dead, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Visions, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack, Wild Chronicles, Miffy and Friends and Cyberchase to national and international audiences. Through its wide range of channels and platforms, WNET.ORG serves the entire New York City metro area with unique local productions, broadcasts and innovative educational and cultural projects. In all that it does, WNET.ORG pursues a single, overarching goal — to create media experiences of lasting significance for New York, America and the world. For more information, visit www.wnet.org.

Produced by American Documentary, Inc., and now in its 22nd season on PBS, the award-winning POV series is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today’s best independent documentary filmmakers. Airing June through September, with primetime specials during the year, POV has brought more than 275 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide and has a Webby Award-winning online series, POV’s Borders. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today’s most pressing social issues. More information is available at www.pbs.org/pov.

POV Interactive (www.pbs.org/pov) | POV’s award-winning Web department produces special features for every POV presentation, extending the life of our films through filmmaker interviews, story updates, podcasts, streaming video and community-based and educational content that involves viewers in activities and feedback. POV Interactive also produces our Web-only showcase for interactive storytelling, POV’s Borders. In addition, the POV Blog is a gathering place for documentary fans and filmmakers to discuss and debate their favorite films, get the latest news and link to further resources. The POV website, blog and film archives form a unique and extensive online resource for documentary storytelling.

POV Community Engagement and Education | POV works with local PBS stations, educators and community organizations to present free screenings and discussion events to inspire and engage communities in vital conversations about our world. As a leading provider of quality nonfiction programming for use in public life, POV offers an extensive menu of resources, including free discussion guides and curriculum-based lesson plans. In addition, POV’s Youth Views works with youth organizers and students to provide them with resources and training so they may use independent documentaries as a catalyst for social change.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Educational Foundation of America, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The September 11th Fund and public television viewers. Funding for POV’s Diverse Voices Project is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KCET Los Angeles, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

DVD REQUESTS: Please note that a broadcast version of this film is available upon request, as the film may be edited to comply with new FCC regulations.

Patti Smith | One of the early pioneers of New York City’s dynamic punk scene, Patti Smith has been creating her unique blend of poetic rock and roll for more than 35 years. She was born in Chicago in 1946 and was raised in southern New Jersey before migrating to New York City in 1967 and teaming up with art student Robert Mapplethorpe, who pursued painting and drawing while Smith focused on poetry.

In February 1971, Smith had her first public reading at St. Mark’s Church on the Lower East Side, accompanied by Lenny Kaye on guitar. That same year, she co-wrote and performed the play Cowboy Mouth with Sam Shepard. Smith formed a band and performed at the legendary CBGB in 1975. She and the group subsequently recorded four albums: Horses, Radio Ethiopia, Easter (which included her Top 20 song “Because the Night,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen) and Wave.

In 1979, Smith retired from the public eye and moved to Detroit with Fred ‘‘Sonic’’ Smith. They married in 1980, had two children and wrote songs together with no regret for their self-imposed exile from show business. In 1988, they recorded Dream of Life, which included the classic anthem “People Have the Power.” It was Smith’s final collaboration with three of her closest companions, who all met with untimely deaths: Mapplethorpe, who photographed her for the cover; Richard Sohl, who played keyboards; and her husband, who composed the music.

Smith released Gone Again, a highly acclaimed meditation on passage and mortality, in 1995. The album and the related tour, which had Smith opening for Bob Dylan, marked Smith’s re-emergence as a performer and the beginning of her collaboration with Sebring on “Patti Smith: Dream of Life.”

Smith has worked with museums all over the world. In 1999, she read at the Whitney and Guggenheim Museums. In 2000, she participated in the launching of the William Blake exhibit at London’s Tate Gallery. She worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with its Blake program in 2001 and its Diane Arbus exhibit in 2005.

She is the author of Witt, Babel, Wool Gathering, The Coral Sea and Complete. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, as have her drawings, which have been shown at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2002, “Strange Messenger,” an exhibition of her drawings, silkscreens of images depicting the remains of the World Trade Center after 9/11 and Polaroid photos opened at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. The exhibit was then featured at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and continues to be viewed in museums throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.

In 2003, Smith was the recipient of the Torino Poetry Award and the Premio Tenco, both in Italy. She received the Women of Valor Award at the ROCKRGRL Music Conference on November 10, 2005, exactly 30 years to the day after the release of Horses. That year, she was awarded Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest grade awarded to artists who have contributed to furthering the arts throughout the world, by France’s minister of culture.

Smith’s recent albums include 2005’s Trampin and Horses/Horses, the 30th anniversary re-issue of Horses. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Her latest volume of poetry is Auguries of Innocence. She is currently finishing a book on her artistic growth and friendship with Mapplethorpe, while preparing for an exhibit of her visual works at the Cartier Foundation in France.

Steven Sebring, Director / Executive Producer / Co-producer / Cinematographer | “Patti Smith: Dream of Life” marks the feature directorial debut of artist and photographer Steven Sebring. Born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona, Sebring taught himself photography as a teenager. He later moved to Europe, establishing himself as a photographer known for merging raw realism with the fantasy of high fashion. He has worked for many magazines and has shot advertising and fashion campaigns for companies such as Ralph Lauren, Lanvin, Maybelline and Coach. He has also shot and directed several short films, including New York Stories (2003) and Road Stories (2004), both for DKNY and released to critical acclaim.

Sebring designed the award-winning photographic book Bygone Days (2005), which depicts the history of a rural American family in Bison, S.D., from 1910 to 1950 through photos by Sebring’s great-great uncle John Penor, who, at 97, passed away in the same sod house where he was born.

In 2005 and 2006, Sebring photographed the art of renowned French sculptors Claude and Françoise Lalanne for the book Lalanne, published in 2006. His photographs have been included in Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections and Notes for the Future and on her albums Gung Ho, Land and Twelve. He continues collaborating with Smith, photographing and producing the art exhibit “Objects of Life,” which premiered in 2008 in Park City, Utah, in conjunction with Sundance, and creating the book Patti Smith: Dream of Life (Rizzoli, 2008).

Margaret Smilow, Executive Producer/Co-producer | Margaret Smilow has been producing award-winning films on international culture and arts since 1979. Her projects with Alternate Current, the company she founded in 1979, include the highly acclaimed Music for the Movies, a collection of films on the art and craft of scoring music for feature films. The first film in the series, Bernard Hermann, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1992. Other works include Great Musicals: The Arthur Freed Unit at MGM, Dashiell Hammett. Detective. Writer., Busby Berkeley: Going Through the Roof and Isamu Noguchi: The Sculpture of Spaces.

Smilow joined THIRTEEN and WNET.ORG in 1997 as director of culture, arts and documentaries. She recently produced Barenboim on Beethoven, which features the pianist performing all 32 piano sonatas, and Simon Schama’s Power of Art, an eight-part television history of the creative moment featuring eight artists. The episode “Bernini” won an International Emmy Award.

She received the 1999 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Classical Music – Dance Program for Itzhak Perlman: Fiddling for the Future and a Nonfiction Series Emmy for Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note. Her projects for PBS’ Great Performances include “Kurosawa,” “Making the Misfits” and “Degas and the Dance,” which won a Peabody Award.

Simon Kilmurry, Executive Director, American Documentary | POV, Executive Producer, POV | Simon Kilmurry joined American Documentary | POV in 1999 and was appointed executive director in 2006. He oversees all aspects of American Documentary’s programs and operations including the production of POV. Since 2006, POV has been honored with a Special Emmy for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking, 26 Emmy nominations, one Emmy Award, two Academy Award nominations, two Peabody Awards and three Webby nominations.

Kilmurry has been involved in the production and distribution of more than 140 POV films and special presentations, including a live town hall meeting with ABC News’ Nightline and the PBS miniseries Right Here, Right Now. He has helped lead new POV initiatives, including the Diverse Voices Project to support emerging filmmakers and the Webby Award-winning online series Borders.

He has served on panels and juries at national and international festivals, conferences and institutions, including IDFA, DocAviv, SilverDocs, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, Australian International Documentary Conference, The New School, New York University, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the IFP Film Market. Kilmurry is a member of the board of screeners for the duPont-Columbia Awards and is an international advisor to The Greenhouse Fund.

Previously, Kilmurry was associate director at Teachers and Writers Collaborative. He has served as a board member and treasurer for a number of nonprofit organizations including Elders Share the Arts and East Harlem Block Schools. He attended the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Columbia University Business School’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management.

2 Replies to “patti smith | dream of life”

  1. IN THE FIRST YEAR OF MY FOURTH DECADE I HAD FLASHBACKS TO THE FORE OF MEMORIES I WAS PREVENTED FROM HAVING – THE INITIATING FACTOR BEING A THIRTY FIVE YARD BODYSURF UP THE EASTSHORE FREEWAY BAY AREA STATESIDE – THEN THE FUCKING FILTH THREE PACKED ME AND SUBSEQUENTLY SHOEHORNED ME ONTO THE WHACKO WARD FOUR NORTH AT THE HERRICK FACILITY BERKELEY – THEN THE BASTARDS STRAPPED ME TO A BED FACE DOWN WITH THE HEAD QUACK TELLING ME I HAD NO RIGHTS – IVE GOT EVERY RIGHT UNDER MY BELT AND MAN IM STILL SPITTING BRICKS -…A SONG PROSE POEM OR WHATEVER YOU CARE TO DEEM IT AS CAME TO BE SHORTLY THEREAFTER ALTHO ALTERED AND ADJUSTED ALONG THE WAY – I PRESENT THIS ONE TO YOU AND DAMN THE CREEPS WHO DONT LIKE OR CARE FOR WHAT IVE GOTTA TELL THEM ABOUT ………ORIGINALLY ENTITLED “”NAILBOMB”” AND NOW SOMETHING A TOUCH DIFFERENT ….

    EARLY IN THE MORNING IM LYING IN MY BED – I FEEL SO COLD YET THE BEADS OF SWEAT THEYRE ROLLING OFF MY HEAD – YOU YOURE LOKKING CERTAIN AND ME IM FEELING SURE – YOU WONDER HOW IM FEELING AS YOURE WALKING OUT THE DOOR – WELL – IM FEELING WELL –

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    XX TO ALL AT OUTLAW POETRY AND I WISH THOSE THAT EXPRESS THEIR FEELINGS ALL THE BEST …..PROVIDING THEYRE GOOD PEOPLE – XX –

    THE FLAME FAIRY

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