Big Sur

Big Sur 2013

5.02

Big Sur is a film adaptation of the Jack Kerouac autobiographical novel of the same name.

2013

Chicago 10

Chicago 10 2008

6.00

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.

2008

Living on the Edge: The Poetic Works of Gérald Leblanc

Living on the Edge: The Poetic Works of Gérald Leblanc 2005

1

A child of the Beat Generation, Gérald Leblanc conjoined urban-ness and American-ness, wandering and belonging, far beyond the boundaries of taboo. In so doing, he helped propel Acadia into the modern era.

2005

Black Lodge

Black Lodge 2022

1

Set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth, a tormented writer faces down demons of his own making. Forced to confront the darkest moment in his life, he mines fractured and repressed memories for a way out. A woman is at the center of all the writer’s afterlife encounters. She is the subject of his life’s greatest regret, and she materializes everywhere in this Otherworld. The writer cannot detach any thoughts of his life from her.

2022

Pull My Daisy

Pull My Daisy 1959

5.96

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.

1959

A Line a Day Must Be Enough!

A Line a Day Must Be Enough! 2008

1

In a film bursting with lyrics, pictures, and music the director shows us a way into the peculiar universe of Tóroddur, and the otherwise not very talkative artist gives us a glimpse of his thoughts on art, God, life and death.

2008

Beat Angel

Beat Angel 2004

1

Jack Kerouac returns to earth as an angel with the goal of changing the life of a struggling writer.

2004

William S. Burroughs Birthday Bash

William S. Burroughs Birthday Bash 2014

1

To celebrate the 100th birthday of America's most audacious writer, William S. Burroughs, Chicago Humanities Festival brings together a motley crew of poets, writers, and musicians. William Seward Burroughs (1914 - 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs's needs took him across the United States, down into Mexico, to Europe and beyond. On his travels, he meets up with various members of the underground drug and "outcast" cultures.

2014