In this definitive documentary, director Christopher Felver crafts a sharply wrought portrait that reveals Ferlinghetti's role as catalyst for numerous literary careers and for the Beat movement itself. Interviews with Ferlinghetti, made over the course of a decade, touch upon events that began to unfold in postwar America. These events include the publication of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and Jack Kerouac's On the Road, as well as the divisive events of the Vietnam war and the sexual revolution. Since its inception in 1953, Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore quickly became an iconic literary institution that embodied social change and literary freedom. Featuring Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Dennis Hopper, Billy Collins, Dave Eggers, Anne Waldman, Michael McClure, Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Robert Scheer, and more.