Special program  

The film 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 politicisation. Their movement connects with bebop, John Cage's music, abstract expressionism, and living theatre. In recent interviews, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kesey, Ferlinghetti, Mailer, Jerry Garcia, Tom Hayden, Gary Snyder, Ed Sanders, and others measure the Beats' meaning and impact.

Festivals

Sundance Film Festival, USA, 1999

Chuck Workman

Chuck Workman has been involved in filmmaking and theatre for over twenty-five years as an award-winning director, writer, and producer. Workman's theatrical short Precious Images, made for the Directors Guild of America, won an Academy Award for the Best Live Action Short and has become the most widely shown short in film history, appearing in schools, museums, international conferences, numerous film festivals and over 1000 theatres worldwide. It is one of his five films circulating in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has made documentaries on Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King and the history of the motion picture. He is also the writer and director of independent dramatic films.

Selected Filmography

Jonas Mekas and the (Mostly) American Avant-Garde Cinema, 2009
A House on a Hill, 2003
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol, 1990
The Money, 1976