Barstow, California

Running time: 76’

The documentary “Barstow, California” is recording life & landscape in the Mojave Desert. It's the 3rd film in the trilogy “The American West” (the other two films: “Nome Road System” & “Milltown, Montana”) about places in the sparsely populated areas of the American West. To the trilogy’s style of “landscape listening" is added the voice of Spoon Jackson (an internationally-acclaimed, Barstow-born prisoner/poet) reading passages from his autobiography dealing with his youth & life in the area.

Authors:

  • Rainer Komers '18

    Film studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, master student. Documentaries made in Alaska, Germany, India, Japan, California, Latvia, Montana, Yemen. Prize of German Film Critics (1980), German Short Film Award (2004), Ruhr Prize for Art and Science (2006), Masterclass IDF / Prague (2012), Videonale.scope Retrospective / Cologne (2014); Iasi-Installation 2015; Villa Kamogawa Residency / Goethe-Institut Kyoto (2015). Festival screenings in 35 countries; awards in Canada, France, Poland and USA. Director, cinematographer, Word art, poetry. Lives in Berlin and Mülheim an der Ruhr.

    Filmography:

    Barstow, California (2018)
    Ruhr Record (2014
    Milltown, Montana (2009)
    Kobe (2006)
    NH 2 (2004)
    Ofen aus (1995)
    Lettischer Sommer (1992)
    480 Tonnen bis Viertel vor zehn (1982)
    2211 Büttel (1976)

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  • Spoon Jackson

    Born in 1957 in Barstow, California. At 19 he became involved in a domestic dispute that resulted in a murder and was sentenced to life without possibility of parole.
    Autumn 1985, Spoon began a 4-year poetry course at San Quentin state Prison; prisoners, staff and poets from the outside began calling him “poet.”
    Spoon has written poetry, plays, novels, tales, short stories and the auto-biography “By Heart,” awarded in PEN-USA's prison writing contest. 2010 he published his book of poems “Longer Ago.”
    Spoon’s friends and supporters collect signatures under a petition to give him second chance.

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Screenings: