Morris Ruskin’s Los Angeles-based Shoreline Entertainment has taken international rights to Gustave Reininger’s documentary Corso: The Last Beat.

The film, which has its market debut at the EFM, is about Beat poet Gregory Corso’s trans-European road trip to track down his Italian mother who abandoned him at birth.

Ethan Hawke narrates, and also appears towards the end of the film as Corso returns to New York to resume his work and confront his own mortality.

Brandon Paine, director of acquisitions at Shoreline, and Sam Eigen, the company’s executive vice-presi-dent, negotiated the deal with Reininger.

“[Corso], along with the ‘Beats’, have been far more monumental than most realise in shaping youth culture, the sexual revolution and even hip-hop,” Ruskin said. “This film, which feels more like a narrative than a documentary at times, tells an amazing story which we’re proud to represent.”

Ruskin’s EFM documentary slate also includes Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke’s Blood Into Wine, the story of former Tool and A Perfect Circlesinger Maynard James Keenan, who became a wine-maker in the Arizona Desert; and Fat Belly — Chopper (Unchopped), the true story of legendary Australian criminal Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read.

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