The Final Academy Documents

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.

For No Good Reason a film about Ralph Steadman. Johnny Depp guides the visually stunning journey, smashing narrative conventions, moving seamlessly from interview to animation and in the finest Gonzo tradition questions of witness and authenticity are challenged. Steadman's art is for the first time animated, including illustrations from Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vagas. Featuring Richard E Grant, Terry Gilliam, Bruce Robinson and with music from Slash, The All American Rejects, Jason Mraz, Crystal Castles, Ed Hardcourt and Beth Orton. A touching and at times funny film about honesty, friendship and the ambition driving an artist. This is a true record of the demise of the 20th Century counterculture and hipster dream with Ralph Steadman the last of the Gonzo visionaries.

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.

East Village, New York, 1978. William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Allen Ginsberg, and other brilliant minds come together in an explosion of ideas, art, and rebellion.

A thoughtful portrait of a renowned artist, this documentary shines the spotlight on New York City painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. Featuring extensive interviews conducted by Basquiat's friend, filmmaker Tamra Davis, the production reveals how he dealt with being a black artist in a predominantly white field. The film also explores Basquiat's rise in the art world, which led to a close relationship with Andy Warhol, and looks at how the young painter coped with acclaim, scrutiny and fame.

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.

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.

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.

The American composer and author Paul Bowles was a man with a great deal of charisma and influence. When he moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1949, half the world followed him to the enigmatic city. His marriage with author Jane Bowles was a loving relationship of opposites, even though both were homosexual. Based on exclusive interviews with Bowles shortly before his death interwoven with anecdotes recounted by his friends and co-workers, the film portrays a daring and visionary life as well as a relationship shaped by an interdependency that encompassed much more than sexuality.

Stephen Smith sets out to discover the real Andy Warhol - in the hour-by-hour detail of his daily life.

Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman.

Experimental artistic film which uses the milieu of experimental art with a background of various kinds of sounds and music. (worldcat.org) Posthumously released short film compiled from reels of film found at Balch’s office after his death.

For over 30 years, the so-called First Transmission video from Psychic TV, has been the stuff of, well, “snuff film” legend. First advertised in the back pages of Thee Grey Book , The First Transmission was an ultra weird touchstone of the underground VHS tape trading scene of the 1980s.

In 1960, Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine, a hypnotic light device with the power to induce hallucinations, drugless highs, and revolutionize human consciousness. It looks simple enough; a 100-watt light bulb, a motor, and a rotating cylinder with cutouts. Just sit in front of it, close your eyes, and wait for the visions to come. The Dream Machine enthralled mystics and freethinkers everywhere; Kurt Cobain had a dream machine, and William S. Burroughs thought it could be used to “storm the citadels of enlightenment.” With a custom-made Dream Machine in tow, director Nik Sheehan takes us on a journey into the life of Brion Gysin; his art, his complex ideas, and his friendships with some of the most eccentric counter-cultural icons. Taking the Dream Machine as the basis of its explorations, FLicKeR asks crucial questions about the nature of art and consciousness, and imagines a humanity liberated to explore its creativity in complete freedom.

The great Beat Generation experiments took place in Tangier, the Moroccan city where William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and the Moroccan painter Hamri taught Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg how to live outside the law. This DVD features one of the last interviews with Burroughs and previously unseen vintage footage of him in his prime during the 50s and early 60s.

Essentially a dizzying montage of quirky shots of legendary Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs and noted surrealist artist Brion Gysin, this nearly 20 minute avant-garde short features repeated articulations of such random things as "Hello," "Where are we now?," and "Look at that picture" instead of music or standard dialogue. The narrative is decidedly nonlinear and perplexing, with no discernible plot whatsoever as we see images of Gysin working on his paintings and calligraphic designs and Burroughs rummaging through draws, packing a suitcase, giving a young man a physical, making a call in a phone booth, and waiting on a platform for a subway train.

A 16mm anthology of experimental super 8 films by Derek Jarman, Michael Kostiff, Cerith Wyn Evans and John Maybury, with framing footage by Tim Burke of Brion Gysin using a dream machine. Jarman's contribution is a version of his 1977 Art and the Pose (aka Arty the Pose), refilmed at 3fps, with a musical soundtrack. Jarman planned The Dream Machine as a commemoration of William Burroughs and Gysin's 1982 visit to the UK, and received initial funding from the Arts Council in 1983, then rethought the project as a portmanteau film featuring Gysin alone. The production remained in limbo until 1986, when James Mackay obtained completion funding from the British Film Institute. (Since this film was released on VHS accompanied by Jarman's Broken English: Three Songs by Marianne Faithfull, T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven and Pirate Tape under the umbrella title The Dream Machine, synopses of this film have often muddled up its details with those of the earlier films. )

Will Hunting is a headstrong, working-class genius who is failing the lessons of life. After one too many run-ins with the law, Will's last chance is a psychology professor, who might be the only man who can reach him.

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee, an American ex-pat in his late forties, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton, a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.

Portland, Oregon, 1971. Bob Hughes is the charismatic leader of a peculiar quartet, formed by his wife, Dianne, and another couple, Rick and Nadine, who skillfully steal from drugstores and hospital medicine cabinets in order to appease their insatiable need for drugs. But neither fun nor luck last forever.

A girl born with enormous thumbs in the repressive era of the 1950s learns to turn her quirks into assets.

On New Year's Eve 1928, in the New York underworld, a gambler sells his body to science, a gangster needs a transfusion, and a gambler is on the run

New Year's Eve takes on new meaning when the Devil, Jesus Christ, and Christ's assistant Magdalena discuss and debate the End of the World.

I am so endlessly alone. Whats my illusions, whats my odds, and illusions have to be killed, I don't have more time to destroy. Is my loneliness real and is my longing about what? Then who are this people?

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.