Chicago 10

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.

William S. Burroughs Birthday Bash

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.

Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! From LeRoi to Amiri

The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews recorded in the late '90s.

Living on the Edge: The Poetic Works of Gérald Leblanc

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.

A Line a Day Must Be Enough!

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.

Pull My Daisy

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.

Big Sur

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

The Subterraneans

A disillusioned writer explores the subterranean depths of San Francisco's North Beach district.

Tinta Film

Black Lodge

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.

Beat Angel

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

The Honey Bee

Beat poem parable to black youth.

Bojan, beyond the smile

Bojan Krkic has had success in the palm of his hand, but the difficulties encountered by a precocious and sensitive talent like him have marked his career since he made his debut with FC Barcelona at the age of 16. Bojan is a clear example of the pressure to which young talents in sport are subjected.

The Modrý Case

Bohumil Modrý, the best hockey goalie in the world, who significantly contributed to the first international successes of Czechoslovak hockey after World War II. In 1948, he was offered a job in the NHL, but his stellar sports career and happy family life were destroyed by a trumped-up political trial in 1950. He died prematurely in 1963 at the age of 46 from the effects of imprisonment and radiation.

The Son

“The True Biography of Nikita Mikhalkov” is the story of one of the most famous Russian directors (and one of the most adored actors by the public), told unbiasedly - that is, not from the words of Mikhalkov himself.

Echo

Ania and Bartek, two stuttering teenagers undergoing speech therapy, are learning to like themselves and stop being afraid.

Empty Hours

In a retirement home in a small village in the south of France, residents try to build a community. What ties can they still manage to forge in this anonymous environment often perceived as hostile?

In Heaven There Is No Beer

The story of the Los Angeles 'Kiss or Kill' music scene (2002-2007). Fed up with the wretched Sunset Strip pay-for-play policies, 'too cool for school' trendiness of the Silverlake scene and apathetic crowds, the bands that made up Kiss or Kill forged their own scene based on great music, cheap booze, low cover, and a mid-western sense of community and friendship. At it's peak, Kiss or Kill had more than 60 bands in its roster and over 1,000 local L.A. fans. But as Kiss or Kill grew and became more popular, it fell victim to the same 'venue-isms' of other L.A. clubs and eventually became the very thing it was fighting against.

Trinkhalle

Silvia and Birgit have never met, but they live similar lives: both work over 15 hours a day and give everything to their regular customers. For decades, they have been the proud owners of their own “Trinkhalle” in the deepest Ruhr area.

Seven Days to Remember

The Soviet advance met with fierce, idealistic resistance. We join the hundreds of students as they man barricades constructed from overturned lorries to try to halt the advance. Sparsely armed, they fight fiercely, driven by a belief in their new and better socialism. But the deadening, inevitable weight of Soviet might soon stamps its boot across this hopeful Czech vision. Over 100 people died in the reprisals which followed, and tens of thousands fled their homes for the West. This is the definitive story of the heady days before Soviet "normalisation" took hold. The film was assembled using footage smuggled out of Prague. What began as an account of the liberation of a people, became a documentary of oppression; as the tanks moved in, the cameras simply continued rolling.