Barstow, California

Third part of The American West Trilogy – the other two parts being Nome Road System and
Milltown, Montana -, the film is a poignant and multi-layered portrait of the life and landscape of the Mojave Desert. Structured in a loose way, that almost allows comparisons to John Fahey’s spare fingerpicking, like a skeletal blues lost in time, the film observes how life weaves itself in and outside the texture of an American life that the ideology of neo-liberal policies has completely forgotten. The voice of poet and inmate Stanley “Spoon” Jackson, who began serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in 1977 and has since then served time in more than a half dozen California state prisons, reads excerpts from his autobiography By Heart while images of a world suspended drenched in pure American mythology are intercut, drowned in the brutal reality and consequences of ruthless financial politics. Barstow, California is truly the other side of the American dream. Giona A. Nazzaro

CAST
Stanley „Spoon“ Jackson

and

Bushawn Carpenter
Jennifer M. Garrison, Ph.D.
Abraham Jackson
Robert Jackson
Robert Jackson Jr.
Laura L. Quiroz
Frankie Saiz
Nicholas Webster

CREW
Director: Rainer Komers
Cinematography: Rainer Komers
Editing & co-author: Gregor Bartsch
Sound: Michel Klöfkorn
Production: Rainer Komers, Mathias Krämer, Kurt Otterbacher
Grading: Timm Kröger
Production: kOMERS.film, strandfilm

Funded by: Film und Medien Stiftung NRW, Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Hessen Film und Medien, medienboard BerlinBrandenburg

Rainer Komers
Born in Guben in 1944. Studied film at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, master student. Film projects in Alaska, India, Japan, Yemen, California, Latvia and Montana. “Barstow, California” was honored with the ARTE Documentary Film Award 2018, “Nome Road System” with the German Short Film Award 2004, “B 224” with the Hessian Film Award 2001, “Gypsies in Duisburg” with the German Film Critics’ Award 1980. Ruhr Prize for Art and Science 2006.

Goethe scholarship Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto (2015). Exhibition/retrospective: Video-onale.scope#2/Cologne (2014), .aparat._04/Iaşi, Romania (2015), Film Club at Sputnik-Kino/Berlin (2018), Int. Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2022), GEGENkino Leip-zig (2024). Festival screenings in 35 countries; awards in Canada, France, Poland and USA. Director, camera, word art, poetry. Lives in Berlin and Mülheim an der Ruhr. 

Films (selection)
2022 Miyama, Kyoto Prefecture – 97 min
2018 Barstow, California – 76 min
2017 Kursmeldungen – 30 min
2015 Daugava Delta – 21 min
2014 Ruhr Record – 45 min
2012 25572 Büttel – 5 min
2007 Ma’rib – 30 min
2006 Kobe – 45 min
2004 Nome Road System – 26 min
2004 NH 2 – 52 min
1999 B 224 – 23 min
1997 Ein Schloß für alle – 44 min
1995 Ofen aus – 75 min
1992 Lettischer Sommer – 87 min
1989 Erinnerung an Rheinhausen – 69 min
1985 Die Sterne der Heimat – 12 min
1982 480 Tonnen bis Viertel vor zehn – 45 min
1980 Zigeuner in Duisburg – 37 min
1976 2211 Büttel – 44 min

In 1999, with the road movie B 224, I began a series of short and medium-length films that depict life and everyday life in a place and in a landscape by means of a collage of showplaces. The works I made in India, Japan, Yemen, Latvia and the USA dispense with voice-over, dialogue and music and instead compose the sounds produced in the scenes in the manner of musique concrète, without manipulating or alienating them. The program of the Viennale Film Festival in Vienna describes the camera work in Daugava Delta (2014):

Komers is the postmodern ‘man with the camera’, whose anonymous protagonists communicate first and foremost through movement. He sympathizes with the collective hero, i.e. the place itself.

With the film Barstow, California, I tried for the first time to combine the audiovisual representation of a landscape (Mojave Desert) and a place (Barstow) with elements of the life story of a protagonist (Spoon Jackson) – Life & Landscape. In his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1927), the writer Alfred Döblin had already given his male protagonist a place in Berlin as a ‘co-protagonist’ and only added the subtitle „The Story of Franz Biberkopf” at the request of the publisher Samuel Fischer. With the protagonist Spoon Jackson in Barstow, a figure from the anonymous collective is individualized and brought into correspondence with his surroundings.
The African-American writer Spoon Jackson was born and grew up in Barstow. In 1977, aged 20, he killed a white woman during a domestic dispute and was sentenced to life imprisonment ‘without possibility of parole’ (LWOP). In California, no prisoner with such a sentence has ever been released early or pardoned. During his time in San Quentin, Jackson attended a poetry course and has since written poems that have been published in the USA and Germany. He has taken part in documentary films, appeared as an actor in Beckett’s „Waiting for Godot” and, together with his poetry teacher Judith Tannenbaum, has written the autobiography „By Heart”, in which he describes his childhood and adolescent years.
At the beginning of my involvement with Spoon, there was a voice, comparable to the voice of Amiri Baraka or Chuck D, with which a man – whom we can only hear, not see, in Swedish filmmaker Michel Wenzer’s short film „Three Poems by Spoon Jackson” – chants his rough verses into Michel’s telephone receiver 5,500 miles away via a scratchy line from the Californian maximum security prison New Folsom:

Heart of the High Desert
Stretched out here on this bunk
my mind drifts and dreams
within itself
searching for a poem

Ocean winds,
gentle breezes
find their way through the bars.
Through the bars
a sparrow sings
and it’s mellifluous melody
is all about love

(…)

The firm, driving voice of Spoon speaking the poem „Heart of the High Desert”, immediately captivated me, and on 7 March 2008 I wrote a first letter to her owner in New Folsom: 

I am a filmmaker and I saw at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival in Germany the film you made together with Michel Wenzer. I am very touched by the passion and quality of your poetry! (…) I hope and wish that you have to recite your poems not any longer over a crackling phone line from a California prison but face to face to your audience – now!

PRESSE
Landscape or Prison
Duisburg’s documentary film week discusses a search for clues in ‘Barstow, California’.

Stanley Russell Jackson, known as Spoon Jackson, has been imprisoned since 1977. With no prospect of early release, he has since familiarized himself extensively with the Californian prison system, from the notorious San Quentin to Lancaster State Prison in Los Angeles County. He was 19 years old when he killed a woman. He experienced the trial as an impenetrable language event: ‘I would not let unknown words trap me.’ In prison, Spoon Jackson became a poet and activist, and people around the world now follow what he has to say about himself and America.

Last Tuesday, there was supposed to be a Skype connection to California in the ‘Filmforum Duisburg’ cinema, but it didn’t work out. Instead, the voice of Spoon Jackson could be heard from the screen a little later. The film Barstow, California by Rainer Komers is a portrait of the small town on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, where Jackson comes from. Some of his relatives still live here, the US Army maintains a training camp in the area, otherwise it is mainly a few long-distance roads that cross here and characterize the townscape. Rainer Komers finds a prototypical American microcosm, with quirky individualists, some of whom have come from far away, with gun freaks who finally want to feel the recoil of a real machine gun, but also with committed advocates of civil rights and freedoms. Above all, however, he finds a highly photogenic landscape, which in many places is already becoming a landscape of memories: The pioneering deeds that America still dreams of can be seen here on the tracks of an old railway that now only runs for tourists.

Barstow is also a landscape of memory for Spoon Jackson, whose voiceover sets the score for the film. And so a visitor from Germany puts together a significant piece of (critical) American mythology here, which was rightly honored with the main prize donated by ARTE at the award ceremony for the Documentary Film Week Duisburg on Sunday. Bert Rebhandl (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – 14.11. 2018) 

»Barstow« is good work, Rainer. It captures so very much—certainly Spoon’s existential soul, the mean lovingly crafted reality of Americana. We are the land we come from. We embody the spirit and the spirits of the hills and valleys, the economic manufacture and manifest of nature, their contradiction, and contradictions. The simple elegance of her people. The space you give Spoon’s words and his family’s recollections and reflections. The rumbling, lumbering sound of trains moving on rails directions determined. And the hills and dunes, and mounds and mountains symbolic of the strength of the people and at the same moment they’re frailty. Poignantly done! Ketu Oladuwa, Fort Wayne, Indiana – June 18, 2022

Barstow, California
A small Californian town in the Mojave Desert. Rainer Komers films the people, the landscape, the trains. Black writer Spoon Jackson, who grew up here and has been serving a life sentence since 1978, tells of a life full of violence and community spirit. A magnificent, multi-layered portrait of an eternal place, a bygone era and a lost but tenacious society. Philipp Stadelmaier, Süddeutsche Zeitung

So Close to Hell
Unruly agaves, reddish-brown rocks, the dusty expanse of the Californian desert. Stanley ‘Spoon’ Jackson was born and raised here, in the deserted small town of Barstow. Until one evening, a man dies in a domestic dispute. In a questionable court case, the then 19-year-old African-American was sentenced to life imprisonment with no prospect of parole. Since then, Jackson has moved from prison to prison for 41 years. He finds solace and support in his poems. In ‘Barstow California’, German filmmaker Rai-ner Komers gives the prisoner a voice and tells a collage-like story of his past – a story of poverty and racism, loneliness and hope. A highly political, poetic-biographical work, somewhere between documentary film and visual art. Süddeutsche Zeitung

FESTIVALS & AWARDS
2018
Visions du Réel, Nyon / Switzerland (World Premiere)
https://www.visionsdureel.ch/de/2018/film/barstow-california

Viennale – Vienna International Film Festival
https://www.viennale.at/de/film/barstow-california

Duisburger Filmwoche / Germany (German Premiere – ARTE Documentary Award)
https://www.duisburger-filmwoche.de/festival18/programm_181106.html

“My skin feels warm and alive this September in San Quentin. Like I’m a lizard sunning myself on a big rock.” So says the voice of poet and prisoner Spoon Jackson, as we gaze at landscape images of the sun-drenched Mojave Desert in California.

The film Barstow, California (the birthplace of Spoon Jackson) is both a poignant portrait of the Californian desert and the life inscribed in it, as well as an encounter with Jackson, who has been serving life sentences in numerous prisons since 1977. Komers has Jackson read passages from his autobiography, which we hear off-screen, without ever bringing him into the picture himself. Instead, we see a virtuoso and surprising collage of cinematographically impressive landscape images of the area in which Jackson spent his brief childhood and youth. This is introduced to us by two of Jackson’s 14 brothers, who live in freedom and provide information about a family history characterised by poverty, violence, loneliness and racism. All of this is dealt with without ever being placed at the centre: a picture of Spoon Jackson emerges from small and tiny pieces that are never too unambiguous, never too clear, never too simple, and which make the person and the place shimmer. Congratulations to Rainer Komers! 10.11.2018 – Statement of the jury: Alejandro Bachmann, Pepe Danquart, Antje Ehmann

Kasseler Dokfest
https://www.kasselerdokfest.de/online-programm/2018-11-16/p-ff732558-65c9-f74b-90f0-9d31f367b4a8/i-e9a53901-d052-40ba-8c0b-a9cbdadb010d

blicke – filmfestival des ruhrgebiets
https://blicke.org/filme/barstow-california

Inhospitable living conditions: Dry vegetation, shimmering heat, desert dust – the goods trains have not stopped here for a long time. A stretch of land as a projection and resonance space for its inhabitants and for us as viewers; and for the vocal presence of someone who is absent, someone who has been locked away. The poet’s linguistic images do not fade into the topographies as mere illustrations, they overlay them, repel them, only to find their way back to them again; they tell of better times, of lost innocence, of poverty and racist oppression. Rainer Komers’ commitment to recognizing the imprisoned African-American poet Spoon Jackson has inspired and touched us deeply. We would therefore like to give Barstow, California an honorable mention. Award jury (blicke -filmfestival des ruhrgebiets)

2019
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival / USA
http://www.bigskyfilmfest.org/festival/films-2019-peak/barstow_california

Lichter Filmfest, Frankfurt
https://lichter-filmfest.de/programm/filmprogramm-2019/barstow-california/

Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg
https://dokfilmwoche.com/de/project/barstow-california/

Achtung Berlin (Preis: »Bester Dokumentarfilm«)
https://achtungberlin.de/wettbewerb/dokumentarfilm-2/barstow-california/

The film begins in black. We hear a heavy door slam shut, a key turns in the lock. Locked in, locked away. Barstow, California takes us into the world of Stanley ‘Spoon’ Jackson, who reads to us off-screen from his autobiography “By Heart”, written in prison, where he has been incarcerated since the age of 20, with no prospect of release. And then the first image: endless vastness. The Californian Mojave Desert, Stanley Jackson’s home. We see a different America than the one of unlimited possibilities. The people that director Rainer Komers meets tell stories that have to do with everyday life and violence, with community and society. This is where Route 66 ends on the horizon. We meet a woman who works in a motel on the highway and dreams of moving away, a man who lives in his car and the boss of a bar where there are fewer customers than photos of deceased regulars. They are all just as trapped as ‘Spoon’.
Barstow, California is a film that defies clear interpretation and yet guides us skillfully and consciously. It has captivated us with its sensitive camera work, its clever editing, which places people and places in narrative contexts, and its deep love for people. Jury statement documentary film: Carlotta Knittel, Tobias Büchner, Verena Neumann

San Francisco DocFest
https://sfindie.com/festivals/sf-docfest/

Visible Evidence Conference XXVI, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
https://www.visibleevidence.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/VE_Program-Digital.pdf

Zeise Kinos, Hamburg
https://www.zeise.de/film/2079

Festival International Jean Rouch, Musée de l’Homme, Paris
http://www.comitedufilmethnographique.com/

ZDF/3sat
https://www.3sat.de/film/dokumentarfilmzeit/barstow-california-100.html

2020
Cinémathèque du documentaire à la Bpi, Centre Pompidou, Paris
https://cinemathequedudocumentairebpi.fr/