Found: Kesey Film “Atlantis Rising” [Who & What’s in it?]

John Vonderlin tracks down Ken Kesey’s “missing film”  Atlantis Rising, shot at Ano Nuevo, featuring Russell Towle’s remote cabin.

Email John Vonderlin (benloudman@sbcglobal. net)

Email Russell Towle ([email protected])

John Vonderlin (JV):   I was surprised to read that “Atlantis Rising” was from a children’s play Jo Lysowsky, a friend of Kesey, wrote.  He wrote an article at gatelessgate.newsvine.com about the play and his other life experiences.I’ve posted an email to him on Newsvine and hope to find out a little more. Haven’t located the film at the UCLA Archives yet, as the site is new to me and a little confusing.. Enjoy. John

Russell Towle (RT): Of course this is the same Joe Lysowski I knew at Año Nuevo, who gave me Ron Boise’s old Honda Dream motorcycle, bored out from 300cc to 350cc, with fenders chopped, and who gave me two old round-topped windows from a house in Santa Cruz, windows which are in my hexagonal cabin right now. And whose son’s penciled childhood scribblings are on the weathered boards which make my ceiling as I sit here at my computer. For those boards came from Big Creek Lumber Company, via Año Nuevo.

Joe was quite interesting, knew the Beatles and so on, as I have written for June, and only now do I recall that, yes, the film made at Año Nuevo was titled “Atlantis Rising,” and that it derived from Joe
Lysowski’s play of that title, produced with the help of the Beatles in London a few years earlier.

I am quite excited that you have succeeded in tracking down the film! UCLA!

So now all is needed is a ton of money, to convert to HD video. Hmmm. I have some background in video editing and film conversion.There are easy cheap methods and harder more costly methods. For instance, one could scan each frame of the film, and export directly to QuickTime, as an uncompressed “image sequence,” of, say, 1600X1200 resolution, or even higher, and from there export to any video file type, any type of HD, for instance.

Or one could screen the film and record to video camera.

Wow. Amazing. You found it!

R

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