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.

Beat Angel

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

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.

The Honey Bee

Beat poem parable to black youth.

The Subterraneans

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

Big Sur

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

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.

Tinta Film

Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics

A meditation or film-essay on metaphysics, perception, and the purpose and progress of mankind.

Army of Lovers or Revolt of the Perverts

Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US.

Light Darkness and Colour

Using Goethe's Theory of Colors (Zur Farbenlehre) as point of departure, Light Darkness and Colors takes us on a fascinating journey through the universe of colors. In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton published Light and Refraction, his study of the interactions between sunlight and prisms. Newton was, as a good scientist, intent on achieving objectivity, which meant studying sunlight in isolation. He thought colors were contained solely in light, and found the spectrum he was looking for. When he reproduced this experiment, Goethe found another, hidden set of colors missed by Newton. Goethe found the hidden colors in the boundaries between light and darkness. He felt, as an artist, that one could not talk about light without including darkness. Calling it 'the light-darkness polarity', Goethe made this new scientific discovery using artistic methods in conjunction with science.

Abegweit

A day-to-day record of the construction of the Confederation Bridge linking Prince Edward Island to the mainland, Abegweit reveals some of the innovations that made this mammoth project one of the most impressive engineering feats in Canadian history.

Locations: Looking for Rusty James

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

Iron Maiden: Rock in Rio 2013

Iron Maiden at Cidade do Rock, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on September 22, 2013. Setlist: 1. Moonchild 2. Can I Play with Madness 3. The Prisoner 4. 2 Minutes to Midnight 5. Afraid to Shoot Strangers 6. The Trooper 7. The Number of the Beast 8. Phantom of the Opera 9. Run to the Hills 10. Wasted Years 11. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son 12. The Clairvoyant 13. Fear of the Dark 14. Iron Maiden Encore: 15. Churchill's Speech 16. Aces High 17. The Evil That Men Do 18. Running Free

Besa: The Promise

A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.

Billy Crystal: 700 Sundays

In 700 Sundays, legendary comedian and actor Billy Crystal tells the stories of his youth, growing up in the jazz world of Manhattan, his teenage years, and finally adulthood. The Tony Award-winning show is a funny and poignant exploration of family and fate, loving and loss.