Allen GinsbergFilmography

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

Synopsis: With his documentary Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, director Matt Wolf etches out a biographical portrait of avant-garde musician, artist, and disco producer Arthur Russell, who died of AIDS at age 40 in 1992. Though Russell was a classically trained composer and cellist with an Read More

The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

Actors: Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Dr. Timothy Leary

Synopsis: In 1955, poet Allen Ginsberg summed up the greatest fears of his generation in a landmark poem appropriately titled "Howl." As a result of that defining piece of prose, Ginsberg would become an icon of the Beat Generation. Inspired by Ginsberg's powerful personality and captivating charisma as a Read More

Ned Rorem: Word & Music

Actors: Ned Rorem, James Holmes, Sharon Isbin, Claire Bloom, Allen Ginsberg

Sleep in a Nest of Flames

Actors: James Dowell, Charles Henry Ford, Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Mary Lynn Broe

Synopsis: This is a documentary chronicling the life of Charles Henri Ford (now in his nineties and still as alert as ever), a pivotal figure in the European and American avant-garde scene from the late '20s through the present. Born to a Southern family that owned a hotel and included sister Ruth Ford, an Read More

Jonas at the Ocean

Condo Painting

Actors: George Condo, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg

Synopsis: In this documentary, director John McNaughton, famous (or infamous) for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), draws an intimate portrait of the painter George Condo, a friend of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Born in 1957, Condo has been called the high priest of "artificial realism," Read More

Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles

Synopsis: Expatriate American writer Paul Bowles came to the limelight with an adaptation to screen by Bernardo Bertolucci of his first novel The Sheltering Sky. Subsequently, ambitious documentarists from several countries went down to Tangiers, Morocco where Bowles has been living for more than 50 years Read More

Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles

Actors: Paul Bowles, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs

Synopsis: More commonly known as the expatriate author of The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles actually first made his mark on the world as a composer. This documentary sets out to rediscover this forgotten master of 1930s American music. Shot in New York, Paris, and Tangiers, the film details his studies with Aaron Copland Read More

New York, Episode 4: 1898-1918 - The Power and the People

Actors: David Ogden Stiers

Synopsis: It was the fire that sparked reform; after 146 people -- mostly women and girls -- died in the ferocious 1911 blaze that gutted the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, it was discovered that the exits had been locked by the management to prevent theft by the workers. At the time, there were no fire laws Read More

New York, Episode 5: 1919-1931 - Cosmopolis

Actors: David Ogden Stiers

Synopsis: Calling Prohibition a "noble experiment," New York congressman Fiorello La Guardia then declared the law unenforceable. Throughout most of New York City, this was the correct assessment. This is the fifth episode of the epic PBS documentary series about the "Big Apple." Also covered in this Read More

New York, Episode 1: 1609-1825 - The Country and the City

Actors: David Ogden Stiers

Synopsis: The "Big Apple" has a colorful, influential, and, at times, tragic history that spans nearly four hundred years. This is the first episode in the epic PBS documentary series about the most populous city in the United States. Originally christened "New Amsterdam" by its Dutch founders, the city is Read More

New York, Episode 2: 1825-1865 - Order and Disorder

Actors: David Ogden Stiers

Synopsis: New York of the 19th century was already a haven of celebrities; showman P.T. Barnum's museum drew crowds on Broadway, and up the street the great photographer Mathew Brady stayed busy taking "likenesses" of the rich and famous. However, when British author Charles Dickens visited New York in Read More

New York, Episode 3: 1865-1898 - Sunshine and Shadow

Synopsis: With the Civil War settled, New York could focus solely on the business of business and getting rich. Central Park finally became a true park instead of a shantytown, and "Boss Tweed" ran the city like his own private fiefdom, ultimately leading to the rise of righteous reformers such as Theodore Read More

The Third Mind

Actors: Peter Coyote

Synopsis: Directed by William Tyler Smith, The Third Mind is a video montage of images, poetry, and music that chronicles the artistic joint venture of Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Beat poet/playwright Michael McClure. The "third mind" (as described by Beat guru William Burroughs) that evolves from Read More

Don't Look Back

Actors: Marianne Faithfull, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan

Synopsis: In 1965, filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker accompanied Bob Dylan to England to make a film about the singer/songwriter's British tour. At the time, no one could have known how fortuitous Pennebaker's timing would prove to be. Within a few months of this tour, Dylan would forsake his role as The Conscience Read More

No More to Say and Nothing to Weep For: An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg

Synopsis: Allen Ginsberg was one of the leading voices of American poetry from 1956, when he published his ground-breaking piece Howl, until his death in 1997. Along with his friends and colleagues William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Michael McClure, Ginsberg was one of the key figures in the Beat Read More

Jonas in the Desert

Actors: Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, Jonas Mekas, Martin Scorsese

Synopsis: Evidently shot over a decade, this documentary portrait of Lithuanian-born filmmaker-poet Jonas Mekas examines his life and career as a director (The Brig, Guns of the Trees), film critic (Village Voice), film historian, magazine editor (Film Culture), teacher (NYU), film distributor (Film-Makers' Read More

Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider

Actors: Paul Bowles

Synopsis: This documentary profiles the pre-Beat era writer Paul Bowles author of The Sheltering Sky and other classics. He is also a renowned writer of opera and Broadway musicals in the 1940s. Bowles currently lives in Tangier. Bowles was part of an illustrious peer group including Gertrude Stein, Benjamin Britten Read More

On the Road with Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats

Synopsis: Jack Kerouac penned such books as On the Road and The Dharma Bums, which captured the essence of the bohemian life that he came to personify. This documentary follows him on the road from the life of a beatnik in New York City, and across the country to California, as he set out to find America Read More

Road Scholar

Synopsis: Poet and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu was born in Romania, immigrated to the United States in 1966, but didn't learn to drive until the early '90s, when he was 45 years old. After undergoing what he calls "this essential rite of passage," he then sets out on "the ultimate Read More

Song of the Open Road

Synopsis: The once highly controversial Walt Whitman book of poetry, Leaves of Grass, is set to music in Paul Joe Heist's Requiem for Chorus and Orchestra as he contemplates his impending death from AIDS. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol

Synopsis: Fascinating documentary of artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol, combining rare footage with interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Dennis Hopper, David Hockney, Taylor Mead, and Sylvia Miles. ~ Nicole Gagne, All Movie Guide Read More

Berkeley in the Sixties

Actors: Mario Savio, Clark Kerr, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg

Synopsis: Berkeley in the Sixties takes a fond, if not always loving, look back at the epicenter of leftist political activism during the seventh decade of the 20th century. The free speech movement caught national attention in 1964 when the University of California tried to suppress activists distributing Read More

Heavy Petting

Actors: David Byrne, Sandra Bernhard, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs

Synopsis: Those of us who had to suffer such "instructional" films as Dating Do's and Don'ts in high school will be especially entertained by Heavy Petting. In the visually sarcastic manner of the nuclear-age documentary The Atomic Cafe, the film assembles masses of information and misinformation about Read More

Gang of Souls

Actors: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Marianne Faithfull, Richard Hell

Synopsis: This documentary by filmmaker Maria Beatty explores the lives, careers, and creative inspirations of the beat poets, forging insight into the minds of such artists as Gregory Corso, Marianne Faithfull, Richard Hell, Allen Ginsberg, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Read More

Growing Up in America

Actors: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Dr. Timothy Leary, William Kunstler

Synopsis: Director Morley Markson interviews political radicals of the 1960s in this informative social documentary. Twenty years after riots were sparked by anti-war protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the same activists take a retrospective look at the turbulent times. Newsreel clips Read More

The Beat Generation: An American Dream

Actors: David Amram, Amiri Baraka, William S. Burroughs

Synopsis: In the U.S., in the 1950s, contemporary jazz was becoming more and more esoteric, and a small group of writers, poets and musicians who were hip to that beat were exploring the cracks in the American dream. Meanwhile, the Cold War and insistently cheerful and upbeat attitudes were being promoted Read More

What Happened to Kerouac?

Actors: Steve Allen, William S. Burroughs

Synopsis: This biographical documentary tackles the legend of Jack Kerouac, one of the foremost writers of the Beat Generation. Kerouac started a beat that goes on; he's still a major influence in contemporary literature and poetry. The author first broke into prominence with his famous Read More

It Don't Pay to Be an Honest Citizen

Actors: Reed Bye, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Mary Tepper

Synopsis: The comedy and thrills are a little anemic in this movie based on a real-life experience of director Jacob Burckhardt. Warren (Reed Bye) is accosted in Brooklyn one evening by rather unusual muggers -- they steal his can of film (this movie's first version?). Warren is alone in his anxiety over Read More

Kerouac

Actors: Jack Coulter

Synopsis: In this romantic, sentimental homage to America's well-known Beat writer Jack Kerouac, director John Antonelli combines readings from Kerouac's works, footage of the writer with figures such as Steve Allen and William Buckley, views of his home and favorite locales, commentary by fellow writers Read More

Before Stonewall

Synopsis: This documentary by Greta Schiller takes a look at the sometimes oblique American acknowledgment of homosexuals in the decades before a historical flashpoint in 1969. Late that year, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village was stormed by police and its patrons arrested -- resulting in Read More

Burroughs

Actors: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg

Synopsis: This biographical documentary on author and eccentric William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), founder of the Beat Generation literary movement along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, is roughly divided into two segments. The first part has some witty scenes as the camera follows the author around Read More

Poetry in Motion

Actors: Jim Carroll, Charles Bukowski, Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman

Synopsis: Director Ron Mann has put together readings by 24 different poets (after filming a total of 60 writers reciting their works), and then has poet and author Charles Bukowski verbalize "everyman's" criticisms of poetry: it is boring, irrelevant, self-indulgent, and does not make much sense. Then he Read More

West Coast: Beat and Beyond

Fried Shoes, Cooked Diamonds

Synopsis: After World War II there was a group of young men -- writers primarily -- who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream. These men and other artists, associated through mutual friendships, were looking for new ways and means to express themselves and their ideals. Soon their writings Read More

Renaldo and Clara

Actors: Bob Dylan, Sara Dylan, Joan Baez, Ronnie Hawkins, Ronee Blakely

Synopsis: Bob Dylan made this concert film that chronicles a 1975/1976 performance of his Rolling Thunder Revue. In between songs he, his wife Sara Dylan, along with Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, and other counterculture figures perform philosophically based improvisational pieces. During the skits, Dylan Read More

Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family

Actors: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin

Synopsis: The title of this Canadian documentary may have some relation to Canadian Marshall McLuhan's theories. It combines interview with famous U.S. militants of the '60s, such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, with reenactments of their Chicago trials (i.e., the "Chicago Eight," etc.). Other figures of Read More

Diaries, Notes and Sketches

Actors: Dr. Timothy Leary, Jack Smith, Mario Montez

Synopsis: Underground filmmaker Jonas Mekas presents a collection of home movies, outtakes and unfinished projects. A picnic in Central Park with friends is shown, as are Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer in an anti-war protest march. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are shown in their celebrated honeymoon where Read More

Prologue

Actors: John Robb, Elaine Malus, Gary Rader, Christopher Cordeaux

Synopsis: Produced on behalf of the National Film Board of Canada, Prologue is a story of the youth-rebellion movement of 1968. The film concentrates on Jesse (John Robb), who wanders the streets of Montreal selling underground newspapers. Despite the influence of his passive, drug-using roomie David (Gary Rader Read More

Me and My Brother

Actors: Allen Ginsberg, Roscoe Lee Browne

Synopsis: This documentary about poet Peter Orlovsky's schizophrenic brother, Julius, is a film within a film and is generally regarded as photographer/documentarian Frank's masterwork. Brother Julius spent years in a mental hospital and upon release was put into his brother's care. Frank captures the Read More

Chappaqua

Actors: Conrad Rooks, Jean-Louis Barrault, William S. Burroughs, Paula Pritchett, Allen Ginsberg

Synopsis: The bizarre hallucinations of a heroin addict in withdrawal provide the basis for this unstructured, autobiographical film by director Conrad Rooks. It begins as he arrives strung-out in Paris for a sleep-cure. As the strange visions begin, the story jumps haphazardly between reality and his Read More

Wholly Communion

Couch

Pull My Daisy

Actors: Jack Kerouac

Synopsis: Robert Frank's half-hour, black-and-white short film Pull My Daisy has also been released under the title The Beat Generation, and for good reason. Featuring narration written and performed by author Jack Kerouac, the film presents an affectionate portrait of beat culture at its height through the Read More