Four Ways You Can Get to Know Allen Ginsberg

This month, the Walker Art Center presents four films from the life of notorious beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

As a part of 1964 Ginsburg appears in Stockhausen’s Originale: Doubletakes. Screening through October 24th in the Friedman Gallery, Ginsberg appears alongside Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, and others in a performance filmed during Moorman’s Second Annual New York Avant-Garde Festival. Directed by Peter Moore. 1964/1996, 16mm transferred to video, 33 minutes.

As a part of Event Horizon Ginsberg appears in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy screening in the Gallery 2 active zone through October 3rd. Cited as one of the most influential works of independent film and as the beginning of the New American Cinema movement, Pull My Daisy was based on Jack Kerouac’s writings and features his voice-over narration. Poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso as well as painters Larry Rivers and Alice Neel all make appearances in this seminal Beat film about the relationship between art and everyday life. 1959, 16mm transferred to video, 28 minutes

Also screening this month, Jerry Aronson’s The Life and Time of Allen Ginsberg is screening in the Lecture Room through October 10th. Winner of the International Documentary Award’s top prize, this film goes beyond Ginsberg’s poetry to uncover an American cultural icon who championed human right, challenged political and social thought, and influenced culture for more than 60 years. This moving portrait includes interviews with Joan Baez, Beck, Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono, Stan Brakhage, and others 1994, video, 82 minutes.

Finally, James Franco portrays Allen Ginsberg in the Minnesota premiere of the new feature film, Howl, on Thursday, September 30th at 7:30pm.  This new vision, which premiered at Sundance, is not strictly a documentary or a feature film, but a film that intersperses a range of styles and techniques, including animation and archival footage, to tell various elements of the story.  Lauded as echoing “the startling originality of the poem itself…a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment—the birth of a counterculture,”  Howl reimagines the memorable 1955 reading as well as various interviews with the writer as a way to portray him defending his position with respect to the obscenity case. The film will be introduced by directors Rob Epstein and Jerry Friedman 2010, 35mm, 90 minutes.

Oscilloscope Laboratories will release the film in Minneapolis on October 15th at the Landmark Lagoon.

Howl Trailer:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba9yazkl0UE&feature=related[/youtube]