Title: Wilhelm Reich: Viva little man

Presenter: Digna Meller-Marcovicz

Year: 2004
Occassion of film/tape:
Location of film/tape:

Running time / reel: 90 mins / 1
Format: Colour, DVD-Video, NTSC, Region 1

(from cover) An intimate time-capsule of people and places recalling the controversial natural scientist, Wilhelm Reich, M.D., his trial, imprisonment and the court-ordered burning of his books in America. Viva Little Man includes interviews with many of Dr. Wilhelm Reich's former associates, friends, family members and scholars who have personally investigated the facts surrounding his life and work, to include: Dr. Richard Blasband, Willy Brandt (former German Chancellor), Prof. Bernard Grad, Prof. Jerome Greenfield (author of Wilhelm Reich Versus the USA), Mary Higgins (Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Museum), Grete Hoff, Jo Jenks, Heiko Lassek, Elsa Lindenberg, Thomas Mangravite, Renate Moise (Reich's granddaughter), Ilse Ollendorff (Reich's wife), Dr. Eva Reich (daughter and co-worker), Tom Ross, Prof. Bernd Senf, and Dr. Myron Sharaf (author of Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich).

Review: James DeMeo:
While it is true that 'Viva Little Man' is not a documentary in the usual sense, it does provide a lot of historical documentation on central aspects of Reich's work and the legal case against him which are of scholarly interest to those who already know something about him, and who want to go into more details than the usual FDA-skeptic attacks, or the mystical distortions of some of Reich's 'supporters'. Neither has an authentic understanding. Here's a blurb on it:
' Wilhelm Reich: Viva Little Man - DVD An intimate time-capsule of people and places recalling the controversial natural scientist, Wilhelm Reich, M.D., his trial, imprisonment and the court-ordered burning of his books in America.
Viva Little Man includes interviews with many of Dr. Wilhelm Reich's former associates, friends, family members and scholars who have personally investigated the facts surrounding his life and work, to include: Dr. Richard Blasband, Willy Brandt (former German Chancellor), Prof. Bernard Grad, Prof. Jerome Greenfield (author of Wilhelm Reich Versus the USA), Mary Higgins (Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Museum), Grete Hoff, Jo Jenks, Heiko Lassek, Elsa Lindenberg, Thomas Mangravite, Renate Moise (Reich's granddaughter), Ilse Ollendorff (Reich's wife), Dr. Eva Reich (daughter and co-worker), Tom Ross, Prof. Bernd Senf, and Dr. Myron Sharaf (author of Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich).
With visits to the Freud Museum in Vienna, to the Wilhelm Reich Museum and town of Rangeley, Maine, to Food and Drug Administration Headquarters near Washington, DC where the plot was hatched to 'get Reich', to the courtroom in Portland, Maine where Reich was tried, to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary where he was imprisoned and died, to the New York City incinerators where his books were burned, and briefly, a search for Dobrenicza, Bukovina, Ukraine, where Reich grew up. With side-trips to Princeton, New York, Montreal, Berlin and Vienna.
Plus a small collection of Reich-detractors in mainstream psychoanalysis and the FDA, including prosecuting attorney Peter Mills and FDA 'historian' Wallace Jansen (who coldly defends US government bookburning). ' (from Amazon)

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Country origin: USA

Entry number: 3865
English version:

Entry source: Courtenay Young
Entered by: Courtenay Young
Entry date: 29 November 2008

Key Phrases: Reich - Interviews - History
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