For two weeks in 1967, London's Roundhouse hosted The Congress on the Dialectics for the Demystification of Violence, a counterculture happening showcasing R.D. Laing, Gregory Bateson, Emmett Grogan, Stokely Carmichael and Herbert Marcuse. The event's acknowledged star was Allen Ginsberg.
As he pronounced to radical England, Ginsberg was followed by a young filmmaker with a commission from West German television to produce a documentary on...