One More Step WestIs the Sea

One More Step West Is the Sea portrays the extraordinary life and work of Beat poet and Jazz & Poetry pioneer ruth weiss. Born into an Austrian Jewish family in 1928, she spent her childhood in Berlin and Vienna before fleeing the Nazis with her parents and emigrating to the United States. There, she became part of the American counterculture and developed into a pioneering voice of the Beat Generation and the intersection of poetry and improvised music.

Over several years, director Thomas Antonic accompanied ruth weiss in California and Austria, capturing both her performances and her private life. Combining these encounters with interviews and extensive material from weiss' personal archive, the film creates an intimate, multilayered portrait of an artist whose life was shaped by displacement, freedom, poetry, music and an uncompromisingly individual way of living.