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Commune
Commune
Actors: Catherine Guerra, Harriet Beinfeld, Creek Hanauer, Allegra Brucker, Tesilya Hanauer
Genres: Indie & Art House, Documentary
NR     2007     1hr 18min

In the early 1970s actor Peter Coyote and a group of young artists and activists moved to a remote Californian wilderness to create a new world, armed only with the slogan "Free Land for Free People." Fueled by contributio...  more »

     
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Movie Details

Actors: Catherine Guerra, Harriet Beinfeld, Creek Hanauer, Allegra Brucker, Tesilya Hanauer
Genres: Indie & Art House, Documentary
Sub-Genres: Indie & Art House, Documentary
Studio: First Run Features
Format: DVD - Black and White,Color,Widescreen
DVD Release Date: 10/23/2007
Original Release Date: 11/03/2006
Theatrical Release Date: 11/03/2006
Release Year: 2007
Run Time: 1hr 18min
Screens: Black and White,Color,Widescreen
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 10
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Languages: English

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Movie Reviews

Building the new in the shell of the old
Kerry Walters | Lewisburg, PA USA | 07/20/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)

"What do you do when you become convinced that your country is unchangeably repressive and that efforts at reform at best tinker around the edges of it? For thousands of people in the 1960s, the answer was to build alternative communities--"communes," as they were called then, "intentional communities," as they're called today. One of the longest-lasting of these 1960s-era communities, Black Bear Ranch, is explored by director Jonathan Berman in his fascinating "Commune."

Founded in 1968 on 80 secluded acres in northern California, Black Bear is still up and running, although with a different generation of residents. Berman tracks the commune from its early days through the present with generous interviews of some of its founders, many of whom--actor Peter Coyote, Osha Neumann, Herbert Marcuse's stepson--have since "gone respectable."

One of the best features of Berman's film is its balance. Like all communities, Black Bear had its ups and downs--youthful idealism and youthful naivete, sexual freedom and sexual jealousy, tolerant earnestness and dogmatic zealotry--and Berman goes to some pains to make sure that his audience is exposed to both. His interviews with the commune's residents also reveals, without hitting the viewer over the head, that communal living can bring out the best as well as the worst in individual personalities.

One of the more touching interviews in the film was with the dying Richard Marley, co-founder of Black Bear. Marley's transformation during his years at the commune, from a rather authoritarian type to one who gradually learned to embrace "open-heartedness"--is one of the individual success stories from the experiment, and in many ways it symbolizes the general transformation the community went through (one of the most obvious of these is the change of attitude towards women as equal partners).

Black Bear's motto from the very beginning was "Free Land for Free People." There are hazards, of course, when one embraces freedom, but there are also great possibilities. Berman's "Commune" is a testament to both. But it would've been good to hear a bit more than Berman delivers about the nature of the alternative society that Black Bear residents hoped to build--their values, their hopes, their vision.
"
Back to the 60s
Bradley F. Smith | Miami Beach, FL | 11/24/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)

"Here's a story of a real hippie commune in northern California. Full of vintage film showing hairy people cavorting in the wilderness. Nice, if painful, contrasts with the same characters today, looking tired and old, but still spouting the old hippie phraseology. They went back to the land. You should step back in time and watch this documentary."