Synopsis
The German poet Rolf Dieter Brinkmann died at the age of 35 in an accident in London in April 1975. He left behind a voluminous, unfinished work-in-progress that included many hours of documentary film material, audio recordings and thousands of photographs. The film, Brinkmanns Wrath, incorporates portions of this existing material with new scenes shot in the city of Cologne, London and Cambridge. Considered to be in the seventies one of the most important poets of post-war Germany, Brinkmann’s work is definitely in the marginal outsider vein, approximating a sort of hybrid of Frank O’Hara, William Burroughs, and W.C. Williams, all of whom were important influences on Brinkmann’s work. His confrontational nature and volatile personality were feared at readings, and together with his huge creative output and his early death, earned him a reputation as the "James Dean of poetry,” a true enfant terrible of contemporary letters.
