Energy and How to Get It

Following his emigration to the U.S. in 1947, Robert Frank documented life in South America, Europe and specifically in the U.S. with his camera. After the publication of his seminal photographic collection, The Americans, Frank went to work as an avant garde filmmaker. His first film Pull My Daisy (1959), with voiceover by Jack Kerouac, tracks the then newly-designated Beat Generation; the film is generally considered a cornerstone of avant garde cinema due to its unusual juxtapositions and improvisation. Beginning with Me and My Brother (1965-68) Frank began to blur the line between documentary filmmaking and reality by including more staged, traditional storytelling elements. Cocksucker Blues, his 1972 documentary about a Rolling Stones tour, calls into disturbing question just what is real and what is fiction in the context of life on the road with a rock band. Multi-image and multi-media has become a hallmark of Frank’s filmmaking, which almost universally casts an eye on himself as an artist, as in About Me: A Musical(1971) and Home Improvements (1985). In 1987’s Candy Mountain, Frank explored the realm of commercial film, but it is by no means an ordinary effort. His keen eye and photographer’s vision is at the core of all of his work. —allmovie guide