rubin

The Trial of the Chicago 7: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin Were the Martin and Lewis of the Radical Left

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan intoned on his song “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” influencing a group of young mad bombers to blow against the wind. The group at the center of Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 didn’t blow up bathrooms in federal investigative agencies; they protested bombings, and all other forms of violence, when they stood against authority at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The Youth International Party, or Yippies, was non-violent, even if one of the co-founders, Abbie Hoffman (played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the movie),…
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Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground

Barbara Rubin's 29-minute experimental film Christmas on Earth caused a sensation when it first screened in New York City in 1964. Its orgy scenes, double projections and overlapping images shattered artistic conventions and announced a powerful new voice in the city's underground film scene. All the more remarkable, that the vision belonged to an 18 year old teenager. A virtual Zelig of the '60s, Barbara Rubin introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan to Kabbalah and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. The same unbridled creativity that inspired her to make films when women simply didn't, saw her breach yet another…
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