Beat Angel

Pull My Daisy

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.

Big Sur

Big Sur is a film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac autobiographical novel of the same name.

The Subterraneans

A disillusioned writer explores the subterranean depths of San Francisco's North Beach district.

The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher. Extensive archival footage, interviews, and home movies cover Allen Ginsberg's life, activism, and influence on American culture through the Beat era, the 1960s, and beyond.

Odd Børretzen: Mer enn helt all right

A portrait of Norwegian poet Odd Børretzen in his own words, featuring musical highlights from Børretzen's work with musicians Alf Cranner and Lars Martin Myhre.

Black Lodge

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.

Chicago 10

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.

Howl

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.

Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri

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.

A Closer Shave

Private View Episode Three. Self care and razor blades.

Living on the Edge: The Poetic Works of Gérald Leblanc

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.

A Line a Day Must Be Enough!

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.

William S. Burroughs Birthday Bash

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.

Strange

An immersive beat poem written and created for the misunderstood, the marginalized, and the magical.

The Honey Bee

Beat poem parable to black youth.

Tinta Film

White Snow Of Russia

The screenplay of his own novel, wrote the grandmaster, the champion of the USSR chess Alexander Kotov. Tape of the world chess champion Alexander Alekhine.

Contempt

Art film producer Jeremy Prokosch, unhappy with the work of his director, hires Fritz Lang (as himself) to direct an adaptation of The Odyssey, but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb, he brings in a screenwriter to energise the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

Fargo

Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!

The Edukators

Three activists cobble together a kidnapping plot after they encounter a businessman in his home.