Stop Smiling and the Gene Siskel Film Center present the Chicago premiere of Christopher Felver’s Ferlinghetti, a documentary film about poet and City Lights Bookstore founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti’s best-known work, A Coney Island of the Mind, has sold over one million copies since first being published in 1958, and his publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl precipitated a historic obscenity trial in 1957, in which the court affirmed the poem’s “redeeming social importance”. City Lights, meanwhile, has gone on to become one of the best-loved bookstores in the country and has published countless classic American and international authors.

Noted photographer and filmmaker Christopher Felver has maintained a friendship with Ferlinghetti for over 30 years. His film includes footage from poetry readings, travels abroad and interviews with Ferlinghetti, as well as commentary from Ginsberg, Dave Eggers, Billy Collins, Michael McClure and others.

Felver participates in a discussion about the film afterward, moderated by STOP SMILING editor and publisher J.C. Gabel.

Recorded Saturday, May 08, 2010 at Gene Siskel Film Center.