AllMovie

Director Robert Stone and producer John Wehrheim collaborate to offer a detailed account of the ultimate hippie fantasy in this documentary that examines what happens when a group of free-thinking radicals reject their American values in favor of starting their own community on a picturesque Hawaiian beach. The year was 1969. Artist and oceanographer Howard Taylor (brother of actress Elisabeth) was living in Kauai's North Shore, and decided to bail out a mischievous group of mainlanders who had recently been arrested for vagrancy. Once they were freed, Taylor invited them to live on his land. To say that they too Taylor up on his generous offer would be an understatement at best, as his land was soon overrun by every hippie, surfer, seeker, and psychologically scarred Vietnam vet capable of making their way to Kauai. Less than ten years later, their dreams of Shangri-La would go up in flames when government workers torched the camp before the last resident even had the chance to leave. Thirty years later, film footage shot at Camp Taylor blends with vivid black and white photographs and interviews with the very people who once made their homes there in order to create a living tribute to a forgotten community of dreamers who longed for something more than what their country had to offer.