Tucsonan's film takes a look at 'Hippie Family Values'

Beverly Seckinger explores hippie elders and their family at a communal ranch in rural New Mexico in her documentary, “Hippie Family Values,” which has its Arizona premiere on Thursday, April 12, at The Loft Cinema.

How she came up with the idea:

Seckinger, a University of Arizona professor, has been in a band, The Wayback Machine, for 20 years. The band’s core audience is the greater hippie diaspora of Southern Arizona and New Mexico. After playing a gig at a communal ranch in New Mexico, Seckinger decided to begin shooting in 2006.

“I started getting to know all kinds of interesting hippie elders,” she says. “People who are 10 to 15 years older than me who I had always kind of looked up to since I was a kid — the generation who did all kinds of idealistic, audacious things to create a better world.” She says she hopes this documentary will debunk stereotypes of today’s hippies.

The film’s premiere:

The world premiere was at the Santa Fe Film Festival in February. Seckinger says the screening was small. There were fewer than 100 seats. “It was a lot of fun,” she says. “There were representatives from three generations of women from the ranch there.”

Themes explored in the documentary:

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Because the documentary was shot over 10 years, Seckinger was able to capture the changing political climate through three U.S. administrations. “The values represented (by the commune members) are important counter-values to the kind of depressing developments on the ascendant in this country now —consumerism out of control, individualism, me first, racism and nativism,” she says. “So this is a place whose values are about sustainability. These are people who have been devoted to stewardship of the land and waters of this community for 40 years now. There are no flush toilets. They have compositing. They have gardens.”

Unexpected connection:

Seckinger says a large theme in the film involves issues associated with aging and dying. In the film, the mother of one in the older generation dies. “After we had edited that scene, my own mother died,” she says. “I had to learn tools for coping with that through accompanying Kate through the passing of her mom somehow through the film.” She was also taking care of her partner’s mom while they were taking care of Kate’s mom. “If you’ve got to die, it’s a good death to be surrounded by caring people and not in an institutionalized environment.”

IF YOU GO 

What: Hippie Family Values premiere

When: 7 p.m. April 12 with a show from The Wayback Machine after the screening

Where: The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd

Cost: $5