Oahu Private Screening of ‘TAYLOR CAMP’
Thursday, March 4th, 2010, Filed under: EVENTS
This coming Saturday, March 6th, the Bayer Estate will hold a private seaside screening of the Final Film Festival Edit of TAYLOR CAMP.
In 1969, Howard Taylor, brother of actress Elizabeth, bailed out a rag-tag band of 13 young Mainlanders jailed for vagrancy and invited them to live on his oceanfront. Soon waves of hippies, surfers and troubled Vietnam vets found their way to this clothing-optional, pot-friendly grow-your-own tree house village at the end of the road on Kauai’s North Shore. Government officials torched the tree houses in 1977 after condemning the village to make way for a State park, leaving little but ashes and memories of “the best days of our lives”.
John Wehrheim’s film TAYLOR CAMP tells the story of the village’s eight-year existence–a community that rejected consumerism for simple living and the healing power of nature. But TAYLOR CAMP is more than just a story about hippies going camping and the government officials who finally got rid of them. The film reveals the much larger story of Kauai in the age just before it lost its innocence–a story told through brutally honest, often humorous, interviews made decades later after Wehrheim tracked down the campers, their neighbors, their friends and enemies.
Sometimes, to see and understand a larger historic picture, you simply need to focus in on a tight handful of people that represent not only what was happening in many other places but also the dream of many other people at that time. TAYLOR CAMP does that for both Kauai and the hippie era with historic footage, old photos and a pivotal sampling of the songs that energized the Woodstock Generation before it was all packaged and marketed as a billion dollar entertainment industry-before their heroes morphed from barefoot gurus with begging bowls and chillums into rock stars in limousines chugging Dom Perignon and hoovering coke. Set against the backdrop of Kauai’s North Shore and Na Pali Coast in the ’60s and ’70s, TAYLOR CAMP captures the way that people looked, talked, dressed and acted during that turbulent period; and interviews conducted thirty years later give us a poignant glimpse of the eroding effects of time among a group that, for the most part, is still trying to live that dream in a society where simple living is not just hard-it’s illegal.
Meet and Chat with the Film’s Producer, John Wehrheim. $25/person
The Bayer Estate – 5329 Kalanianaole Highway (makai side)
5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. – picnic on the oceanfront lawn & listen to some Fab 60’s music before the film begins
7 p.m. – Showtime!
8:30 pm Book signing
BYOB: Bento, Blanket, beach chair, beverage of your choice (bring a sweater or blanket in case the evening is cool)
Friends, Food & Film-gazing on the Seaside Lawn. . . under a Starry Sky!
For more info call Debbie Hemingway at 808 294-4194
