Allen Ginsberg
Also Known As: Irwin Allen Ginsberg, Alan Ginsberg
Biography: Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet. He is considered to be one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation during the 1950s and the counterculture that soon followed. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Description above from the Wikipedia article Allen Ginsberg, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Newark, New Jersey, USA
Adult: No
Deathday: April 05, 1997
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Known For:
The Velvet Underground
Overview: Experience the iconic rock band's legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2021-10-15
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Chappaqua
Overview: Semi-autobiographical story of Conrad Rooks, who travels to France to undergo a drug-withdrawal cure. Flashbacks to the beginings of psychedelia in San Fran. Though initially confusing, as Rooks blends drug-illusion with reality, and cuts color with black-and-white and monochrome tinted shots, "Chappaqua" is conventionally constructed with a beginning, middle, and end.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-08-30
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Dont Look Back
Overview: In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Bob Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and kicks back with fellow musicians Joan Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-05-17
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American Magus
Overview: A documentary about the brilliant and versatile cult figure Harry Smith (1923-1991) – compiler of a famous three-part folk album, film-maker, painter, anthropologist, obsessive collector and thinker.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2002-01-01
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Greetings from Washington, D.C.
Overview: A short documentary about the First National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which took place on Sunday, October 14th 1979.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1981-10-16
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Berkeley in the Sixties
Overview: A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1990-04-23
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Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
Overview: The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2023-03-24
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Howl
Overview: It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2010-08-26
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Pull My Daisy
Overview: 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.
Genres: Comedy Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1959-11-11
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Brakhage
Overview: BRAKHAGE explores the depth and breadth of the filmmaker’s genius, the exquisite splendor of his films, his magic personal charm, his aesthetic fellow travelers, and the influence his work has had on generations of other creators. While touching on significant moments in Brakhage’s biography, the film celebrates Brakhage’s visionary genius, and explores the extraordinary artistic possibilities of cinema, a medium mostly known only for its commercial applications in the form of narratives, cartoons, documentaries, and advertising. BRAKHAGE combines excerpts from Brakhage’s films and films of other avant-garde filmmakers (eg, George Kuchar, Jonas Mekas, Willie Varela, Bruce Elder, and others); interviews with Brakhage, his friends, family, colleagues, and critics; archival footage of Brakhage spanning the past thirty-five years; and location shooting in Boulder, Colorado and New York.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1998-09-17
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Why Is We Americans?
Overview: The story focuses on Newark's Baraka family and its involvement in social activism, poetry, music, art and politics.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2022-01-14
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Take Your Pills
Overview: In a hypercompetitive world, drugs like Adderall offer students, athletes, coders and others a way to do more -- faster and better. But at what cost?
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2018-03-09
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We Can't Go Home Again
Overview: Nicholas Ray plays himself, acting as mentor, friend, and artistic inspiration to his students at Binghamton. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-05-10
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A.G.
Overview: Experimental film by Ugo Nespolo.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: it
Release Date: 1968-05-11
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Tonite Let's All Make Love in London
Overview: Peter Whitehead’s disjointed Swinging London documentary, subtitled “A Pop Concerto,” comprises a number of different “movements,” each depicting a different theme underscored by music: A early version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time” accompanies a young woman’s description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic “Changing of the Guard” to shots of Buckingham Palace’s changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) – and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O’Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones’ 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-09-26
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Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
Overview: Wild Combination is a visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his death in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur's work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family, friends, and closest collaborators to tell this poignant and important story.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2008-09-26
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Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles
Overview: One of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century, writer, composer and wanderer Paul Bowles (1910-1999) is profiled by a filmmaker who has been obsessed with his genius since age nineteen. Set against the dramatic landscape of North Africa, the mystery of Bowles (famed author of The Sheltering Sky) begins to unravel in Jennifer Baichwal's poetic and moving Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles. Rare, candid interviews with the reclusive Bowles--at home in Tangier, as well as in New York during an extraordinary final reunion with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs--are intercut with conflicting views of his supporters and detractors. At the time in his mid-eighties, Bowles speaks with unprecedented candor about his work, his controversial private life and his relationships with Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, the Beats, and his wife and fellow author Jane Bowles.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-04-01
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Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Overview: CRAZY WISDOM explores the arrival of Tibetan Buddhism in America through the story of Chögyam Trungpa, who landed in the U.S. in 1970. Trungpa became renowned for translating ancient Buddhist concepts into language and ideas that Westerners could understand and shattered preconceived notions about how an enlightened teacher should behave. Initially rejected, his teachings are now recognized by western philosophers and spiritual leaders as authentic and profound.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2011-11-25
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Norman Mailer: The American
Overview: A provocateur, a rebel, a performer, and a true American, Norman Mailer never stopped giving people something to talk about. This documentary goes beyond the Mailer of the bookshelves and NY Times best seller list to Mailer the social critic, family man, filmmaker, and lover. Here's a look into the life of a complex, intellectual, working class hero. With never before seen footage of Adele Morales Mailer's startling revelations after being stabbed by her husband. Featuring unseen footage and interviews from wives and lovers, enemies and admirers, his children and the man himself.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2012-05-18
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ChickenHawk
Overview: Members of the controversial group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) discuss why their organization supports "boys and men who have or desire engagements in sexual or emotional relationships."
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1994-01-01
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Me and My Brother
Overview: Julius Orlovsky, after spending years in a New York mental hospital, emerges catatonic and must rely on his brother Peter, who lives with poet Allen Ginsberg. When Julius wanders off in the middle of filming, Frank hires and actor (Joseph Chaikin) to play the character and begins a fictional version of his psychological portrait. Then, as suddenly as he vanished, Julius turns up in an institution where he and Peter must face their relationship.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-02-02
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Izzy Young: Talking Folklore Center
Overview: Izzy Young was the guru of American folk music. In this documentary covering his legendary Folklore Center in New York Izzy meets with friends and collaborators like Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs, Mayor Ed Koch to reminisce. Includes unique archival footage and folk music from the 1960s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-12-31
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Wholly Communion
Overview: A short film documenting what was referred to as "The International Poetry Incarnation". It was billed as Great Britain's first full-scale "happening", with the world's leading Beat poets together under one roof at the Royal Albert Hall on June 11, 1965, for an evening of near-hallucinatory revelry. It came to be seen as one of the cultural high points of the Swinging Sixties.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-12-31
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Suite 212
Overview: Suite 212 is Paik's "personal New York sketchbook," an electronic collage that presents multiple perspectives of New York's media landscape as a fragmented tour of the city. Paik critiques the selling of New York by multinational corporations and the city's role as the master of the media and information industries; Collaborators Yalkut, Davis and Kubota contribute their own vibrant and punchy segments.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1974-12-28
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Yippie
Overview: The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a radically youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary group opposed to war and the status quo of American culture. Known for using theatrics and humor to advocate social change, several Yippies were notably on trial as the Chicago 7. Primarily consisting of footage from the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago which sparked massive demonstrations that were met by violence and hysteria caused by the police. This film also includes found newsreel footage as well as Pigasus - the pig the Yippies advanced as a candidate for President of the United States.
Genres: Comedy Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-12-31
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He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Overview: A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-02-22
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The Source
Overview: Traces the Beats from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac's meeting in 1944 at Columbia University to the deaths of Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs in 1997. Three actors provide dramatic interpretations of the work of these three writers, and the film chronicles their friendships, their arrival into American consciousness, their travels, frequent parodies, Kerouac's death, and Ginsberg's politicization. Their movement connects with bebop, John Cage's music, abstract expressionism, and living theater. In recent interviews, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey, Ferlinghetti, Mailer, Jerry Garcia, Tom Hayden, Gary Snyder, Ed Sanders, and others measure the Beats' meaning and impact.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-01-23
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Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder
Overview: The poet and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is among the world's living monuments to arts and letters. For well over a half century, Ferlinghetti helped shape the currents of poetry and literature with his forceful engagement with society and an ideological position that often found him at odds with the political currents of his day. Ferlinghetti's quiet, behind the scenes demeanor and disarming mien may have assuaged, or even fooled, certain opponents, while in reality he was a literary mercenary, a rebel at the forefront of our own cultural revolution.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2009-04-01
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Autumn Ritual
Overview: Artists, Philosophers, Musicians, Politicians and more offer their thoughts on Pro Football, in this 1986 film produced by NFL Films.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-09-01
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A Poet from the Lower East Side
Overview: Filmmaker Gyula Gazdag's fascinating documentary follows Hungarian poet, playwright and activist István Eörsi on a trip to the streets of New York to visit his friend and contemporary, the iconic beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Shot just two years before Ginsberg's death, the film follows the two friends as they share poetry and laughs, wandering the streets of the Lower East Manhattan, musing about the past and contemplating the future.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-01-01
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No More to Say & Nothing to Weep For: An Elegy for Allen Ginsberg
Overview: Witness the last days of the Beat poet whose works would capture the very essence of the 1960 counter-cultural movement in an informative documentary featuring Allan Ginsburg's final television interview as well as remarkable deathbed footage shot by underground cinema icon Jonas Mekas.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-11-21
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Silence = Death
Overview: AIDS victims and activists cope with hardship and society’s ignorance.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1990-02-16
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Great Poets: In Their Own Words
Overview: A journey into the BBC archives unearthing glorious performances and candid interviews from some of Britain's greatest poets.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2014-08-10
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Chicago 10
Overview: 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.
Genres: Documentary Animation History War
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2008-02-29
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Happy Birthday to John
Overview: On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono's art, designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art, in New York. On the same day an unusual group of John's and Yoko's friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Krasner, and many others, gathered to celebrate John's birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-10-09
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New York in the Fifties
Overview: New York in the Fifties is the story of a unique time and place, when New York was the hotbed of new artistic expressions, free love, drinking, hot jazz, and radical politics. The film combines stunning archival footage of New York with interviews and footage of icons of the day-Kerouac, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Mailer, Basie, etc. Offering modern day perspective and reminiscences are writers, actors, and artists such as Joan Didion, Robert Redford, Nat Hentoff, Gay and Nan Talese, John Gregory Dunne, William F. Buckley, and Calvin Trillin-all part of the rich cultural and artistic scene of the time. Based on the best-selling book by Dan Wakefield, the film also traces Wakefield's restless rebellion in conformist Indianapolis, and his escape to New York with dreams of writin ga novel, falling in love, meeting like-minded souls and questioning the meaning of life.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2001-10-16
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Renaldo and Clara
Overview: Filmed in the autumn of 1975 prior to and during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour – featuring appearances and performances by Ronee Blakley, T-Bone Burnett, Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Arlen Roth, Phil Ochs, Sam Shepard, and Harry Dean Stanton – the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
Genres: Drama Music Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-01-25
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The Cockettes
Overview: Documentary about the gender-bending San Francisco performance group who became a pop culture phenomenon in the early 1970s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2002-01-16
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La marche gaie
Overview: A short documentary about the October 14 1979 March For Lesbian And Gay Rights in Washington D.C.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1980-01-01
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Johnny Minotaur
Overview: Johnny Minotaur is a lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism are a few of the issues Charles Henri Ford grapples with through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring an impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert and Lynne Tillman.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1971-04-07
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Ah, Sunflower
Overview: Allen Ginsberg in Britain.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-08-13
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Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds
Overview: After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1979-10-01
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Galaxie
Overview: In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-09-03
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Be-In
Overview: Captures the spirit and essence of the great San Francisco Human Be-In of January 14, 1967. Ten thousand people imbued with peace, love and euphoria. Set to hard rock such as only San Francisco blues can produce. BE-IN contains Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Timothy Leary, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel and Buddha. Music by Blue Cheer.
Genres: Music Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-02-01
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Global Groove
Overview: Global Groove was a collaborative piece by Nam June Paik and John Godfrey. Paik, amongst other artists who shared the same vision in the 1960s, saw the potential in the television beyond it being a one-sided medium to present programs and commercials. Instead, he saw it more as a place to facilitate a free flow of information exchange. He wanted to strip away the limitations from copyright system and network restrictions and bring in a new TV culture where information could be accessed inexpensively and conveniently. The full length of the piece ran 28 minutes and was first broadcasted in January 30, 1974 on WNET.
Genres: Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-01-01
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No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
Overview: A chronicle of Bob Dylan's strange evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to protest singer to "voice of a generation" to rock star.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2005-07-21
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Herostratus
Overview: When a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-07-10
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Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri
Overview: 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.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2024-02-16
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The Beat Hotel
Overview: The Beat Hotel, a new film by Alan Govenar, goes deep into the legacy of the American Beats in Paris during the heady years between 1957 and 1963, when Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso fled the obscenity trials in the United States surrounding the publication of Ginsberg’s poem Howl. They took refuge in a cheap no-name hotel they had heard about at 9, Rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, Brion Gysin, and others from England and elsewhere in Europe, seeking out the “freedom” that the Latin Quarter of Paris might provide.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2012-03-30
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Pickup's Tricks
Overview: Pickup's Tricks is a beat documentary of Hibiscus and the Cockettes, who were pioneers of San Francisco’s underground queer theater in the early '70s. It is a multifarious blend of sexual anarchy; a raucous and unscripted mix of liberation and elation as rough and spirited as the lifestyle that created it. The film profiles Hibiscus, founding member of the Cockettes, the psychedelic drag queens that performed midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in San Francisco. The film includes a rare screen appearance of Allen Ginsberg, clean-shaven and costumed in "acute drag" as a Yiddishe Mama with a painted-on third eye. (pickupstricks.com)
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-01-01
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Beat Generation
Overview: Tells the story of the wonderful and long-lasting friendship between Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs that gave birth to the Beat Generation movement.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 2014-02-08
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Lost, Lost, Lost
Overview: Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-09-14
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Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family
Overview: 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 cultural interest from the time, including Alan Ginsberg and Buckminster Fuller, are interviewed or featured. The filmmaker indicates his belief that powerful forces in the U.S. government worked together to suppress American radicals. This view, widely disbelieved at the time, has since been confirmed.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1971-04-11
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All Star Video
Overview: A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Genres: Animation Documentary Music
Original Language: ja
Release Date: 1985-01-21
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Good Morning, Mr. Orwell
Overview: In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).
Genres: Comedy Music TV Movie Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-01-01
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Burroughs: The Movie
Overview: An exploration of Burroughs’ life story, as told by Burroughs himself along with many of his contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, Terry Southern, and William Burroughs Jr.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-02-10
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Une semaine dans la vie de camarades
Overview: A road movie whose journey intersects with and extends the events of the International Counter-Culture Meeting that took place in 1975 in Montreal. This meeting, at the heart of the film, features several important figures of the counterculture in Quebec. Throughout the film, these individuals, often through their creative endeavors, question the evolution of their society and counterculture itself.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1976-01-01
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The Fall
Overview: "The Fall" depicts certain scenes in New York City between October 1967 and March 1968, shot by the independent filmmaker, Peter Whitehead. It is a very personal documentary, and Whitehead appears in a large number of scenes, and we hear his lengthy ruminations on the state of the United States and the war in Vietnam.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-01-15
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A Supermarket in Californi
Overview: Carved to the beat verses of Allen Ginsberg and his eponymous poem, A Supermarket in California paints the most surreal contours of an America watched, dreamed, filtered through the eyes of a poet who meets Walt Whitman in a supermarket and pines for a world that may not exist.
Genres: Animation
Original Language: ru
Release Date: 2024-07-25
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Stockhausen's Originale: Doubletakes
Overview: This fascinating film documents the U.S. premiere production of Originale, a Happening by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Filmed at the "2nd Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York," which was produced by Norman Seaman and Charlotte Moorman, the stage production was directed by Allan Kaprow. Performers include Nam June Paik, Moorman, Jackson Mac Low and Allen Ginsberg, among many others.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-01-01
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Tim Leary: The Art of Dying
Overview: LSD Guru Tim Leary teaches us all to die by dying himself in what he calls his "custom death". This documentary deals with Mr. Leary's last days, all captured on camera by his own request.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2008-03-13
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The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music
Overview: The Old, Weird America tracks the history of the Anthology of American Folk Music from its initial compilation of 78 records from rural Americana to its 1952 release on Folkways Records, the urban folk revival of the 1960s, and its continuing influence on contemporary music.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2007-02-01
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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out
Overview: 5 psychedelic short films, broadcast on the French/German tv channel "arte" on 2007-07-16 "Be-In" USA 1967, 7 min "Beatles Electronique" USA 1966-69, 3 min "San Francisco" Great Britain 1967/68, 15 min. "Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable" USA/Great Britain 1967, 12 min. "Eyetoon" USA 1967/68, 8 min.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-07-16
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Scenes from Allen's Last Three Days on Earth as a Spirit
Overview: 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.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-07-03
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As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Overview: A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2000-11-05
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Thot-Fal'N
Overview: This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1978-06-27
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Lake Placid '80
Overview: Paik produced this exuberant, high-speed collage as a commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. In a fractured explosion of densely layered movement and action, images of Olympic sports events are mixed with Paik’s recurring visual and audio motifs.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1980-01-01
Popularity:
Birth of a Nation
Overview: Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-08-06
Popularity:
Dylan Speaks 1965
Overview: The legendary press conference in San Fransisco at KQED studios on Dec. 3rd 1965. This was a pivotal year in Bob Dylan's career. In the early part of the year he released "Bringing It All Back Home", the first album that saw him move distinctly away from his folk music origins. In the summer he followed it with "Highway 61 Revisited", an out and out rock 'n' roll album, and the single "Like A Rolling Stone" hit No.2 on the US charts. His appearance at that year's Newport Folk Festival saw him use an electric guitar on stage, a hugely controversial move at the time that saw him booed by much of the audience. Against this background, Dylan went into the studios of TV station KQED in San Francisco for a broadcast press conference hosted by Ralph J. Gleason, his only one from this era ever to be filmed.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2006-10-31
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Before Stonewall
Overview: New York City's Stonewall Inn is regarded by many as the site of gay and lesbian liberation since it was at this bar that drag queens fought back against police June 27-28, 1969. This documentary uses extensive archival film, movie clips and personal recollections to construct an audiovisual history of the gay community before the Stonewall riots.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-09-15
Popularity:
The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
Overview: Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher. Allen Ginsberg's remarkable life challenged the very soul of the United States.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1994-02-17
Popularity:
No. 18: Mahagonny
Overview: Harry Smith’s final film; an epic four-screen projection. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1980-09-13
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Underground New York
Overview: A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
Popularity:
The Stars Behind the Iron Curtain
Overview: Documentary about western popular music concerts as bearer tendencies of democracy and freedom in the Czechoslovak area in period 1965 - 1990. Unique and comprehensive view of the cultural and political significance visits of western popular and alternative culture personalities who were brought democratic idea to the former socialist Czechoslovakia.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: cs
Release Date: 2014-11-25
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Harry Smith at the Breslin Hotel
Overview: The 94-year-old Robert Frank’s unique recordings of his fellow artists Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg, which he had salvaged from his own archive for Harry Smith at the Breslin Hotel.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-12-01
Popularity:
He! Viva Dada
Overview: Report from the second free expression festival organized at the American Cultural Center, Boulevard Raspail, in May 1965. The shows, all happenings inspired by ""théâtre panique/ the panic theater", includes Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1965-09-05
Popularity:
Don't Blink - Robert Frank
Overview: The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2015-11-19
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The Battle for 'I Am Curious-Yellow'
Overview: A documentary about the film, I am Curious-Yellow (1967), and how it made it into the USA and changed film in USA forever by breaking the USA Obscenity Codes.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-01-01
Popularity:
Poetry in Motion
Overview: More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-09-17
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Ciao! Manhattan
Overview: Fiction and documentary mingle in a freewheeling portrait of Susan Superstar, a New York celebrity on a drug-fueled downward slide that mirrors Edie Sedgwick’s own self-destructive spiral.
Genres: Documentary Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-04-19
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This Song for Jack
Overview: In 1982, Robert Frank was on hand at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to film the Jack Kerouac Conference, a 25th-anniversary commemoration of On the Road in which poignantly aging Beats and fellow-traveling authors, activists, and composers (Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, Herbert Huncke, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ken Kesey, Abbie Hoffman, David Amram) gathered on a rain-swept Chautauqua porch to recite poetry and raise a glass to their patron saint. Particularly memorable is Frank’s humorous encounter with a group of grizzled and well-lubricated onlookers. — Museum of Modern Art
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1983-10-01
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Heavy Petting
Overview: Celebrities and creatives -- including musician David Byrne, performance artist Spalding Gray, comedian Sandra Bernhard, radical activist Abbie Hoffman, and poet Allen Ginsberg-- recall their earliest sexual experiences.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-09-22
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It Don't Pay to Be an Honest Citizen
Overview: An ironic New York City thriller involving a mafioso and a restless, witty lawyer.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1985-02-01
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Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
Overview: Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream, this film captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2019-06-11
Popularity:
Couch
Overview: The couch at Andy Warhol's Factory was as famous in its own right as any of his Superstars. In Couch, visitors to the Factory were invited to "perform" on camera, seated on the old couch. Their many acts-both lascivious and mundane-are documented in a film that has come to be regarded as one of the most notorious of Warhol's early works. Across the course of the film we encounter such figures as poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, the writer Jack Kerouac, and perennial New York figure Taylor Mead.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1964-07-01
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Jonas in the Desert
Overview: Not a documentary in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it is a journey through the world of the artist Jonas Mekas - one of the exponents of independent U.S. movies; founder and director of the New York Anthology Film Archive.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1994-01-01
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Hare Krishna
Overview: A short film from Jonas Mekas depicting an afternoon in New York of people joining in singing "Hare Hare"
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-02-02
Popularity:
Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets
Overview: Maria Beatty's documentary exploring the insights and influences of the American Beat Poets. The film conveys their consciousness and sensibility through interviews with William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, among others. Also weaves in additional commentary from contemporary musicians, poets and writers such as Marianne Faithfull, Richard Hell, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. Also expands upon how the poets reached new levels of creativity and inspired social change.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-01-01
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Joan of Arc
Overview: The story of Joan of Arc as applied to the present revolution in arts and more. The Gothic is applied to the War in Vietnam. The film is experimental in the sense that in it the visual becomes tactile.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-01-10
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Growing Up in America
Overview: Filmmaker Morley Markson shows Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and other '60s rebels, then and now in a follow up to his 1971 film "Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family."
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-04-16
Popularity:
Andy Warhol Screen Tests
Overview: The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-11-28
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Allan for Allan
Overview: A short film by underground filmmaker Barbara Rubin.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1965-10-14
Popularity:
How the Beatles Changed the World
Overview: The fascinating story of the cultural, social, spiritual, and musical revolution ignited by the coming of the Beatles. Tracing the impact that these four band members had, first in their native Britain and soon after worldwide, it reappraises the band and follows their path from young subversives to countercultural heroes. Featuring fresh, revealing interviews with key collaborators as well as a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, this is a bold new take on the most significant band in the history of music and their enduring impact on popular culture.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-10-23
Popularity:
Guns of the Trees
Overview: A depressed woman, Barbara, is on the verge of suicide while a man she meets in a church and a married couple try to convince her that life is worth living.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1961-02-28
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Twenty to Life: The Life & Times of John Sinclair
Overview: John Sinclair first emerged out of his small-town Michigan background to forge a legendary course through the 1960s as a cultural activist, manager of the MC5, and Chairman of the White Panther Party. An early victim of the War on Drugs who faced 20 years to life in prison for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman, Sinclair served 29 months of a 9-1/2-to-10-year sentence before his legal victory on appeal changed the law for good. The long campaign waged by Sinclair culminated in a massive John Sinclair Freedom Rally headlined by John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg and Bobby Seale that resulted in Sinclair's release from prison on December 13, 1971-just three days after the event (Clint Weiler)
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2004-06-19
Popularity:
Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol: Friendships & Intersections
Overview: This intimate portrait of Andy Warhol pulls together a unique library of material shot by New York film legend Jonas Mekas. Spanning from 1963 to 1990, the film features a cast of counterculture icons including Allen Ginsberg, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and Yoko Ono, as well as John and Caroline Kennedy, and Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy Onassis's sister and Warhol muse)—to whom Mekas dedicates the film. The film features footage from the Velvet Underground's first public performance. A portrait of the remarkable life of arguable the twentieth century's most famous artist and leading iconographer.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1990-06-01
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Overview: An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2013-11-23
Popularity:
Road Scholar
Overview: Andrei Cordescu, NPR journalist, Romanian immigrant, naturalized American citizen, and newly-licensed driver, sets out on a cross- country road trip. He travels from-sea-to-shining-sea in a red 1968 Cadillac ragtop, exploring the meaning of freedom to a variety of Americans in this gently comic, yet poignant, documentary. Highlights include stops in New York, Camden, Detroit, Chicago, Taos, Arizona, Las Vegas, and San Francisco.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1993-07-16
Popularity:
Uncle Howard
Overview: When Howard Brookner lost his life to AIDS in 1989, the 35-year-old director had completed two feature documentaries and was in post-production on his narrative debut, Bloodhounds of Broadway. Twenty-five years later, his nephew, Aaron, sets out on a quest to find the lost negative of Burroughs: The Movie, his uncle's critically-acclaimed portrait of legendary author William S. Burroughs. When Aaron uncovers Howard's extensive archive in Burroughs’ bunker, it not only revives the film for a new generation, but also opens a vibrant window on New York City’s creative culture from the 1970s and ‘80s, and inspires a wide-ranging exploration of his beloved uncle's legacy.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-03-10
Popularity:
Phil Ochs Memorial Celebration
Overview: A tribute concert honoring the life of legendary folksinger Phil Ochs recorded at the Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum in 1976.
Genres: Music Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1977-07-09
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William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
Overview: A riveting and emotional journey into the world of writer William S. Burroughs, a man considered as cold as an iceberg on a winter night.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2010-11-05
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Condo Painting
Overview: John McNaughton's spotlight on George Condo and his art. The film, which follows the progress of Condo's large-scale oil painting Big Red over the course of one year, features an appearance by Allen Ginsberg, as well as footage of Condo collaborating with William S. Burroughs on paintings the two made together at Burroughs' Kansas home in the mid-1990s.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2000-03-17
Popularity:
Summer of Love
Overview: Produced in collaboration with MICA-TV, Summer of Love is a public service announcement produced for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Featuring The B-52’s, David Byrne, Allen Ginsburg, Quentin Crisp, John Kelly, and others.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1990-01-01
Popularity:
Symphony Of The Invisible
Overview: "Symphony of the Invisible" is a reflection on creation and how through art, poetry and images you can break the limits that have been imposed on language and life itself.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: es
Release Date: 2020-11-17
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The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
Overview: Portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman found her medium in 1980: the larger-than-life Polaroid Land 20x24 camera. For the next thirty-five years, she captured the “surfaces” of those who visited her studio: families, Beat poets, rock stars, and Harvard notables. As pictures begin to fade and her retirement looms, Dorfman gives Errol Morris an inside tour of her backyard archive.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2017-06-30
Popularity:
Anatomy of Violence
Overview: Documentary of the Symposium on the Dialectics of Liberation and the Demystification of Violence, held in London, July 1967, organized by R.D.Laing, with Stokely Carmichael, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Herbert Marcuse, John Gerassi, and many others. An important record of the spectrum of left-wing politics and personalities during the turbulent Sixties.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1967-11-12
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Ballad of the Skeletons
Overview: A close-up of Allen Ginsberg reciting his “skeletons” poem is bluescreened and dissolved against archival film and video clips, and backed by musicians to create a sort of song that becomes an American anthem.
Genres: Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-11-20
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65 Revisited
Overview: A collection of rare outtakes and performances from Pennebaker's 1965 documentary Don't Look Back.
Genres: Music Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2007-11-28
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Van Gogh's Ear
Overview: A party hosted by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg inspired the director's award-winning graduation film Van Gogh's Ear, an experimental short featuring the maestro talking about his creations, death and immortality.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1995-01-01
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Allan ‘n Allen’s Complaint
Overview: The influence of Jewish fathers on their sons and the complexity of familial relationships are explored in a witty, poignant portrait of two artists. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (whose father Louis was a poet in his own right) and performance artist/sculptor Allan Kaprow (whose father is a high-powered lawyer) are the sons who struggle with and against the influences of these patriarchal figures.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1982-01-01
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U2: A Year in Pop
Overview: Documentary about U2's album Pop and following tour.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-04-26
Popularity:
Fire in the East: A Portrait of Robert Frank
Overview: Presents an intimate view of four decades of the Swiss-born artist Robert Frank who has had an extraordinary influence on contemporary photography and filmmaking. This documentary which examines his life through his films and photographs, includes interviews with many of his collaborators and contemporaries. Written, directed and edited by Philip Brookman, Amy Brookman
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1986-01-01
Popularity:
Chicago
Overview: UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A striking documentary shot cinema verite style of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with contrasting film and audio inside the convention center and the protests outside.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1968-01-01
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Bed Peace
Overview: John and Yoko in the presidential suite at the Hilton Amsterdam, which they had decorated with hand-drawn signs above their bed reading "Bed Peace." They invited the global press into their room to discuss peace for 12 hours every day.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1969-03-24
Popularity:
William S. Burroughs in the Dreamachine
Overview: Jon Aes-Nihil's experimental documentary about iconic Beat author William S. Burroughs' experiences using a stroboscopic device, known as the dream machine, which simulates the electric pulses of the human brain to elicit hallucinations and dream-like imagery while the user's eyes are closed.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2015-04-14
Popularity:
Gay March on Washington
Overview: UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Documentary from Community Video Center San Diego about the Gay Rights March on Washington D.C. on October 14, 1979. Interviews include representatives from the Greater San Diego Business Association, San Diego Democratic Club, Senate for Social Services, and Gay Alliance for Equal Rights, a mother advocating her gay son's rights and creator of a parents activist group in Orange County, Allen Ginsberg, and Gay Mormons, as well as other attendees of the march. Interviewees speak about gay rights, equal protection under the law, and end to discrimination against gay people.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1979-12-12
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On the Road to Desolation
Overview: Andrew O'Hagan looks at a critical point in the life of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac. In 1956 he spent spent 63 soul-searching days as a fire-watcher on Washington state's Desolation Peak. After this stint he was never the same creative force again.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1997-10-11
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Ginsberg/Corso Tapes
Overview: Longtime friends and frequent foils, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso appeared onstage together countless times over the years, reading to audiences that sometimes numbered in the hundreds or thousands. On January 9, 1984, Robert Frank filmed Ginsberg reading his poem “White Shroud,” while Corso read a poem he had written the night before, some turgid verses on priapic preoccupations. — Museum of Modern Art
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1984-01-01
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Moving Pictures
Overview: "Today memory creeps along the wall at Seven Bleecker. In the back of my eyes, longings and obsessions, Outside someone is yelling Robert! I love New York…." Robert Frank looks back on a lifetime of memory-gathering through photographs, home movies (his parents' gravesite, June Leaf making art), portraits of artist friends (Raoul Hague, Allen Ginsberg), and portraits of those he admired (Jean-Luc Godard). The film resembles one of Gregory Corso's "shuffle poems," as Frank muses, "Together go words and images without sound. I have an obsession in my life for Fragments which reveal and hide truth." — Museum of Modern Art
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1994-01-01
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To John With Love
Overview: This was filmed on October 9, 1972 in Syracuse, N.Y., on John Lennon's Birthday; during Lennon/Yoko Ono concert at Madison Square Garden, August 30, 1972; and December 8, 1980, Central Park, New York. The film includes John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Ringo Star, George Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Specter, Stevie Wonder, and many others. Part of the cycle of The First 40.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2006-11-01
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Poets at the Living Theater
Overview: With Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Ray Bremser, Le Roi Jones, Peter Orlovsky, this film takes place in the Living Theater, 1958.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2006-11-01
Popularity:
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
Overview: John C. Lilly is the inventor of the isolation tank, as well as pioneer of studies in dolphin intelligence and support of psychedelics as a positive means for expanding consciousness. The storytelling will be supported by interviews with Lilly’s contemporaries and colleagues, as well as extensive archival records.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2025-01-31
Popularity:
One to One: John & Yoko
Overview: An exploration of the seminal and transformative 18 months that one of music’s most famous couples — John Lennon and Yoko Ono — spent living in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 1970s.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2025-04-09
Popularity:
Ten for Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally
Overview: Concert film documentary. The John Sinclair Freedom Rally was a protest and concert in response to the imprisonment of John Sinclair for possession of marijuana held on December 10, 1971. Features performances from John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder and Bob Seger
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1971-12-10
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Voices & Visions: Walt Whitman
Overview: Walt Whitman was the first major poet to create a truly American vision and style. His extraordinary example gave American verse much of its subsequent character and diction. Rejecting traditional constraints of form and subject matter, Whitman considered democracy itself appropriate grist for his own poetic mill, inventing a radically different sort of free verse to express what he had to say.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1988-01-01
Popularity: