AUBURN — Paul Goodman was a major figure in modern American art culture. Author of legendary bestseller “Growing up Absurd,” (1960), Goodman was also a poet, 1940s out queer (and family man), pacifist, visionary, co-founder of Gestalt therapy—and a moral compass for many in the burgeoning counterculture of the ’60s.

“Paul Goodman Changed My Life,” a documentary about Goodman by producer-director and Auburn native Jonathan Lee,  will be presented by the filmmaker at Temple Shalom, 74 Bradman St., Sunday, March 5 at 3 p.m. Lee will lead a discussion following the movie.

Lee’s film immerses the viewer in an era of high intellect (that heady, cocktail-glass juncture that “Mad Men“ has so effectively exploited) when New York was peaking culturally and artistically; when ideas, and the people who propounded them, seemed to punch in at a higher weight class than they do now.

Using a treasure trove of archival multimedia—selections from Goodman’s poetry (read by Garrison Keillor and Edmund White); quotes from Susan Sontag, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Noam Chomsky; plentiful footage of Goodman himself; plus interviews with his family, peers and activists—director/producer Jonathan Lee and producer/editor Kimberly Reed “Prodigal Sons,” have woven together a rich portrait of an intellectual heavyweight whose ideas were long overdue for rediscovery.

 

This program is open to the public free of charge, but donations will be accepted. For more information, please contact the temple office at 786-4201.