Q&A with Film Director Bill Lichtenstein

Film producer and director Bill Lichtenstein began working at WBCN-FM in 1970 at the age of 14, first as a volunteer on the station’s Listener Line and later as a newscaster and announcer with his own program. Bill’s last film, “West 47th Street,” won the Special Jury Award for Documentary Film at the 2001 Atlanta Film Festival; Audience Award for Best Long Form Documentary at the 2002 DC Independent Film Festival; and an Honorable Mention at the 2002 Woodstock Film Festival. It later aired
on PBS’s P.O.V. and was called “must see” by Newsweek and “remarkable” by the Washington Post.

“WBCN and The American Revolution” includes never before exhibited film material shot by Andy Warhol and cinema vérité pioneer Ricky Leacock, as well as photographic images from a host of top 1960s photographers including the late Peter Simon, brother of singer Carly Simon, and Jeff Albertson. The story is told through the extraordinary history of WBCN, which in its early days called itself “The American Revolution,” as it details how Boston, which was overshadowed in 1967 by the exploding psychedelic scenes in both San Francisco, with its “Summer of Love,” and New York City’s East Village, emerged as the central crossroad of the counterculture and political activism.

The film includes first-person accounts from the station’s staff, as well as newly filmed and archival material that features leading political, social, cultural and musical figures of the day, who crossed paths with the radio station. They include Noam Chomsky, Abbie Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Lou Reed, Jerry Garcia, Bruce Springsteen, in his first radio interview, and Patti Smith, performing with her band in her first live radio broadcast.