On the Trail of Easy Rider

Vor mehr als 40 Jahren entstand das legendäre Roadmovie "Easy Rider". Seine Protagonisten machen sich per Motorrad von Los Angeles auf den Weg nach New Orleans. Unterwegs treffen sie auf Hippies, Drogen, Sex und Gewalt. Der zum Kassenschlager avancierte Film zeigt ein nach dem friedvollen "Summer of Love" des Jahres 1967 eher hässliches Bild der USA. Filmemacher Simon Witter und Hannes Rossacher sind den Spuren der "Easy Rider" gefolgt, um herauszufinden, wie Amerika sich verändert hat.

"A man went looking for America.... And couldn't find it anywhere!" proclaimed the original Easy Rider poster. Four decades later filmmakers Simon Witter and Hannes Rossacher set out to see if they could find America, retracing the film's original route across the country with Easy Rider super fans Jim Leonard and Mike Kittrell, on a quest to find out how the many issues that resonated through the film had developed, for better or worse, in the interim. Along the way they met musicians, journalists, academics, seasteading idealists, drug policy experts and healers, and heard from the film's makers and extras about the dramatic genesis of the cult film that blew like a wind of change through the stilted kitsch of mainstream cinema in 1969, re-writing the rulebook on genre, drugs, music, cinematography and even the use of non-actors, holding a mirror up to the values of a changing America...

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