MVFF47 - RSVP Guide

Crumbling Druid Heights, a once-thriving bohemian enclave near Mill Valley, could face the wrecking ball. Longtime resident Ed Stiles recalls a vibrant community and details its outsized influence on countless disparate 20th-century cultural movements.

Tucked inside Muir Woods near Mill Valley lies crumbling Druid Heights, a once-thriving bohemian enclave. Founded by famed lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow and Roger Somers, a gifted carpenter who made “wibbly, wobbly architecture” inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and others, Druid Heights today is in danger of falling under a National Park Service wrecking ball. Ed Stiles, a longtime resident and skilled furniture maker, gives an oral history of the property, recounting its rich influence on Beats such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; philosopher Alan Watts, whose book The Way of Zen was instrumental in spreading the popularity of Buddhism in the United States; and rock artists including Neil Young and Graham Nash. With archival footage of the burgeoning hub and contemporary video of its slow decline into disrepair, Stiles takes the viewer on a tour through some of the biggest cultural movements of the 20th century, and Druid Heights’ place in them.