The Source
Beat Angel
Bukowski bon into this
the junkys xmas
the last time I comitted suicide
What Happened to Kerouac
Drugstore cowboy (which features Burroughs)
The Beatniks
pull my daisy
william burroughs commissioner of sewers
Heartbeat
Barfly
The Neal Cassady tapes
Naked Lunch
Bukowski at Bellvue
Kerouac a documentary
The Subterranians
Beat
Crazy Love
Tales of Ordinary madness
the charles bukwoski tapes
Ginsberg the life and times of allen ginsberg
to name a very few
Have a brief look at The Beat Movement on Film – A Comprehensive Screening List by Ray Carney, Boston University
new documentary at sundance variety review
For a guy who always looked cadaverous, William S. Burroughs has been overripe for the kind of substantive, stylistically simpatico docu treatment he gets from helmer Yony Leyser, whose “William S. Burroughs: A Man Within” does real justice to the Beat writer, gun nut and literary icon. Specialty/arthouse release would seem a real possibility, especially in urban centers, and more especially, New York.
Burroughs, heir to an adding-machine business and a family that lost its money, was Harvard-educated, conservative in his attire, and became famous before any of his peers, says director John Waters, "for all the things you were supposed to hide: He was gay; he was a junkie; he shot his wife. … " Burroughs was indeed a scandalous personality, but his literary works — such as “The Naked Lunch,” “Queer” and “Junkie” — have become landmarks of American literature. And as the movie shows us, his influences ranged from beatniks to punks, from rockers to poets to performance artists, and to the language itself: "Heavy metal, “Blade Runner,” "Soft Machine and "Steely Dan were all coined by Burroughs. “He was like another kind of Bible,” says old friend Patti Smith.
He was also an inhabitant of the American drug culture when there really wasn’t one, and really did shoot his wife: Drunk and doing a William Tell, he put a bullet through Joan Vollmer’s head in Mexico. Although Burroughs’ public persona was dour, his public voice a drone, and his hat and velvet collars in direct sartorial contradiction of the happy hippie-ish stylings of, say, his good friend Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs mourned. And he admitted that the shooting (for which he never served serious time) made him the writer he was.
Leyser is clearly a Burroughs acolyte, and he taps into the Burroughs sensibility: The abstract stop-action animation by Aimee Goguen and Dillon Markey create aptly crazy interludes between interviews and archival bits, some of which done as avant-garde cinema when Burroughs was a relative youth (even if he never quite looked like one). There is a wealth of anecdotal material. Like his subject, Leyser strives to disengage from the conventional, while still being lucid. He succeeds admirably.
Animation and music are excellent in an otherwise fine production package.
Camera (color, BW), Eric Burton; editor, Ilko Davidov; music, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore; sound, Andy Wenrich, Dustin Camilleri; animation, Aimee Goguen, Dillon Markey; associate producer, Scott Crary. Reviewed at Slamdance Film Festival, Jan. 26, 2010. Running time: 90 MIN.
There is a book on the subject called “Naked Lens – Beat Cinema” by Jack Sargeant. There are however quite a few films from the late 50’s that picture the beats as villains, robbers, crazed criminals etc, in the old good vs evil storytelling style. Be aware of these, for example Beatniks by Paul Frees, and such, even though some of ’em can be amusing. Some other titles are:
Bucket of Blood
Beat Girl
The Rebel Set
Hallucination Generation
Wholly Communion
etc.
Marius Rønnevik
Does anyone know films about/from the beat generation (1950-60s) ? Jack Kerouac, William S. Buroughs, Allen Ginsberg etc.