William S. Burroughs

An informal portrait of the controversial American author William S. Burroughs, featuring interviews and vintage film footage.

An hour-long interview with author William S. Burroughs in which he expounds on American culture, art and morals.

A vibrant portrait of a Beat Generation icon, WILLIAM S BURROUGHS: A MAN WITHIN explores the brilliant and troubled world of one of our greatest authors. Featuring archival footage of Burroughs, as well as interviews with confidants such as John Waters, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop, the film, set to a soundtrack by Patti Smith and Sonic Youth, shows how Burroughs spawned a countercultural movement.

Documentarian Shirley Clarke captures Ornette Coleman's evolution over three decades. The film explores the rhythms, images and myths of America seen through the eyes of an artist's ever-expanding imagination and experience.

This documentary features a discussion between David Woodward and William S. Burrough at LACMA and the last known footage of the author at his home.

Genesis P-Orridge has been one of the most innovative and influential figures in music and fine art for the last 30 years. A link between the pre-and post-punk eras, he is the flounder of the legendary groups COUM Transmissions (1969-1976), Throbbing Gristle (1975-1981), and Psychic TV (1981 to present), all of which merged performance art with rock music. Celebrated by critics and art historians as a progenitor of "industrial music", his innovations have transformed the character of rock and electronic music while his prodigious efforts to expand the boundaries of live performance have radically altered the way people experience sound in a concert setting. But that's just the preamble to the story. Defying artistic boundaries, Genesis has re-defined his art as a challenge to the limits of biology. In 2000, Genesis began a series of sex reassignment surgeries in order to more closely resemble his love, Lady Jaye (nee Jacqueline Breyer), who remained his wife and artistic partner for nearly 15 years. It was the ultimate act of devotion, and genesis's most risky, ambitious, and subversive performance to date: he became a she in a triumphant act of artistic self-expression. Genesis called this project "Creating the Pandrogyne", an attempt to deconstruct two individual identities through the creation of an indivisible third. Tragically, Lady Jaye died in 2007, leaving Genesis devastated, though resilient. Since then, he has ceaseless pursued his physical ideal: a perfect mirror of Lady Jaye's incomparable beauty.This is a love story, and a portrait of two lives that illustrate the transformative powers of both love and art. Marie Losier brings to us the most intimate details of Genesis's extraordinary, uncanny world. In warm and intimate images captured handheld, Losier crafts a labyrinthine mise-en-scene of interviews, home movies, and performance footage. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye documents a truly new brand of Romantic consciousness, one in defiance of the daily dehumanization of the body by the pervasive presence of advertising and pornography, conveying beauty, dignity and devotion from a perspective never before seen on film.

This documentary follows the life and career of legendary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, responsible for the seminal book "The Americans."

A burger shop employee discovers that by changing the background music from pleasantly calming to industrial noise music, he can incite riots and a revolution against the looming power of the government.

When Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs met at Columbia University in the 1940s, they spawned a movement, then called the Beats, that set precedents for the political, hippie and spiritual movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. This comprehensive portrait of the Beat Generation includes interviews with virtually every surviving figure from this period. Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and John Turturro perform dramatized readings of works by Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg. The Source is the definitive film portrait of the Beat Generation and the countercultural movements that followed, directed with flair by Academy Award® winner Chuck Workman.