Howard Bloom spent much of the 1970s and ’80s as the publicist for Michael Jackson, Prince, Billy Joel, Bob Marley, Joan Jett, Run DMC, Queen, and Aerosmith. When in 1988 illness left him housebound for 15 years, he went back to his roots—science, and was called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Freud of the 21st century by Channel4 TV.
BRIC TV chose to make its first feature-length documentary on Bloom’s metamorphosis into what Gear Magazine called the “the next Stephen Hawking” and Buckminster Fuller’s archivist, Bonnie DeVarco, called “The Buckminster Fuller and Arthur C. Clarke of the new millennium.”
“If you’re real lucky, and you keep your eyes open, once in a lifetime you might meet someone as original, perceptive and ahead of his time as Howard Bloom. Collaborating with Charlie Hoxie to tell his story and champion a more creative future is what BRIC TV is all about,” says BRIC TV’s Aziz Isham, executive producer of The Grand Unified of Howard Bloom, which had its world premiere at DOC NYC 2019.
Bloom spent fifteen years in bed, overcome by a case of ME/CFS so serious that for five years he was too weak to talk or to have another person in the room with him. Despite this setback, he wrote three books and organized two international scientific groups. Now Bloom is determined to overcome another obstacle—death. He’s 76 years old and still creating original work, but he’s also trying to leave a legacy that will outlive him “by 350 years.”
Why 350 years? Explains Hoxie, “Bloom says that when he was ten years old and lost, Galileo and Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope, reached out over 350 years to save him. Now he’s committed to saving the next lost kid 350 years down the line.”
Trailer:
Screenings:
January 21, 2020, 8:30AM
January 24, 2020, 2:00PM
Metro Theatre, 618 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA
Runtime: 67 Minutes
Festival Program: https://sbiff.org/download/2020PocketguideOnline.pdf
About Howard Bloom
Based in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Bloom is the author of seven books and has appeared 322 times on 545 North American radio stations. One of Bloom’s books, Global Brain, was the subject of an Office of the Secretary of Defense symposium with participants from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.
Howard Bloom’s new book, Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me: a Search for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock & Roll (Rowman & Littlefield), will come out in April, 2020.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/howbloom
Twitter: @HowardxBloom
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/howard.bloom
http://www.HowardBloom.net