To celebrate the 100th birthday of America's most audacious writer, William S. Burroughs, Chicago Humanities Festival brings together a motley crew of poets, writers, and musicians. William Seward Burroughs (1914 - 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs's needs took him across the United States, down into Mexico, to Europe and beyond. On his travels, he meets up with various members of the underground drug and "outcast" cultures.
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To celebrate the 100th birthday of America's most audacious writer, William S. Burroughs, Chicago Humanities Festival brings together a motley crew of poets, writers, and musicians. William Seward Burroughs (1914 - 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs's needs took him across the United States, down into Mexico, to Europe and beyond. On his travels, he meets up with various members of the underground drug and "outcast" cultures.
2014-11-01
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In a film bursting with lyrics, pictures, and music the director shows us a way into the peculiar universe of Tóroddur, and the otherwise not very talkative artist gives us a glimpse of his thoughts on art, God, life and death.
Archival footage, animation and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
A child of the Beat Generation, Gérald Leblanc conjoined urban-ness and American-ness, wandering and belonging, far beyond the boundaries of taboo. In so doing, he helped propel Acadia into the modern era.
The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews recorded in the late '90s.
Howl is an homage to the reading rituals of the Beat poets, to Wholly Communion, to 1965, to Allen Ginsberg, to Jack Kerouac, to William Burroughs, to all those books that we believe to be published in heaven, and to all the restless spirits, from these lands. The film documents the translator of the poem Howl into Turkish, accompanied by a musician.
Jack Kerouac returns to earth as an angel with the goal of changing the life of a struggling writer.
Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respected bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's Bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results. Pull My Daisy is a film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration.
Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront the darkest moment in his life, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. A woman is at the center of all the writer’s afterlife encounters. She is the subject of his life’s greatest regret, and she materializes everywhere in this Otherworld. The writer cannot detach any thoughts of his life from her.
Big Sur is a film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac autobiographical novel of the same name.
A disillusioned writer explores the subterranean depths of San Francisco's North Beach district.
Made entirely on Roger Wagner's HyperStudio software, Chris Marker explores set theory, using Noah's Ark as an example.
Chris Marker’s Bullfight in Okinawa is a bizarre, 4 min documentary that introduces viewers to Japan’s subterranean past time of bullfighting. Part of Markers five-film “Bestiary” series, Bullfight employs observational documentary techniques and, in particular, Marker’s camerawork is impressive — tight framed shots, free-hand pans, and quick zooms all contribute to the film’s urgent sense of tension — and, if it weren’t for the suspense inducing music, this short-gem would be damn close to pure objective documentary cinema.
A young man, who served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a few months during the war, recounts his experiences. Throughout the film, we only see his face filmed in close-up, along with a few photos. The interview acts as a strong testimony to the failure of the international community in the Yugoslav crisis.
In 1964 Film Culture magazine chose Andy Warhol for its annual Independent Film award. The plan was to show some of Andy's films and have Andy come on stage and hand him the award. Andy said, no, he didn't want a public presentation.
Velvet Underground's first public appearance.
During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome.
This is a video record of the Buddhist Wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg's apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, in his bed; some of his close friends; and the wrapping up and removal of Allen's body from the apartment. You hear Jonas' description of his last conversation with Allen, three days earlier. You see the final farewell at the Buddhist temple, 118 West 22nd Street, New York City, and some of his close friends: Patti Smith, Gregory Corso, LeRoy Jones-Baraka, Hiro Yamagata, Anne Waldman, and many others.
Shot in 1950 upon arriving in America, Mekas did not edit and present the footage until 2003 making this both his first and last film shot on 16mm.
Pictura is a documentary film directed by seven famous directors, and narrated by several famous Hollywood actors. The film attempts to give the general filmgoing public a taste of art history and art appreciation.