Documentary films and television series
The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg by
Presents a documentary on American poet, visionary, spiritual seeker, founding member of a literary movement, human rights and political activist and teacher Allen Ginsberg. Focuses on a timeline of his life and important events that occurred during that time and includes commentary and interviews with friends, family, artists and contemporaries as well as excerpts from various programs, videos and newsreels that included Ginsberg.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 2455Publication Date: 2006
The Source by
Filmmaker Chuck Workman explores the lives, works, and influence of four leaders of the "Beat Generation" of the 1950s: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. Cutting back and forth between archival footage of his subjects and readings of selections from the authors' works, he creates a collage of images that show how the Beats became the dominant counter-cultural movement of the last half of America's 20th century.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 12131Publication Date: 1999
The Language of Life (including Gary Snyder) by
A collection of conversations with thirty-four American poets celebrating language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, playing basketball, losing faith, and finding God.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 10477 (five discs)Publication Date: 1995
Great American Authors Since 1650 (including Jack Kerouac and the Beats) by
Presents the lives and literary output of more than 60 of America's most read authors in concise, stand-alone segments presented in chronological order.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 3647 (four discs)Publication Date: 2007
Dramatic films and television series
Naked Lunch by
Part-time pest-control man and full-time drug addict Bill Lee seeks escape from his troubled existence in 1953 New York and flees to Interzone (a hallucinatory version of Tangiers) where reality and fantasy have merged. It's a strange, surreal landscape inhabited by mugwumps, half-alien, half-insect creatures, man-sized centipedes, carnivorous typewriters and bizarre humans. Compelled to make sense of this alien territory, he writes a book called Naked lunch.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 1190Publication Date: 1991
Howl by
In 1957 San Francisco, poet Allen Ginsberg has just published Howl. This work immediately generates a great deal of controversy. Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been sued on charges of obscenity, as many feel the poem is simply too explicit for publication. When prosecutor Ralph McIntosh and defender Jake Ehrlich go head to head in front of Judge Clayton Horn, freedom of expression hangs in the balance. For the author, filled with the heady joy of poetic success, the trial demands the courage of just being Allen Ginsberg.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 10182Publication Date: 2010
Shadows by
In Beat Generation era New York City, Lelia, a light-skinned black woman living with her two brothers, begins a romance with Tony, a white man.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 6816Publication Date: 1958
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by
Based on Ken Kesey's novel, a free-spirited con fakes insanity in order to get committed to the state mental hospital instead of going to prison. Once committed, his rebelliousness pits him against the head nurse of the mental ward and the full spectrum of institutional repression.
Special features include: The making of One flew over the cuckoo's nest (behind-the-scenes documentary); feature-length audio commentary by director Milos Forman, producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz; additional scenes; cast/director career highlights; theatrical trailer.
Call Number: DVD VIDEO 2334Publication Date: 1975
