In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by "The Merry Band of Pranksters", a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s On the Road. Kesey and the Pranksters intended to make a documentary about their trip, shooting footage on 16mm, but the film was never finished and the footage has remained virtually unseen. With Magic Trip, directors Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood were given unprecedented access to this raw footage by the Kesey family. They worked to restore over 100 hours of film and audiotape, and have shaped an invaluable document of this extraordinary piece of American history.
The 7pm shows on Friday, August 12 and Saturday, August 13 will include Q+A’s with original pranksters, Carolyn Garcia ( the wife of the late Jerry Garcia) and George Walker.