Howl (2008)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unbreakable: The Jelena Dokic Story

The incredible true story of how Jelena Dokic became a tennis star while surviving war, bullying and extreme domestic violence at the hands of Damir Dokic, the tennis father from hell.

Un carnevale dei pazzi, dei sedotti e degli abbandonati

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Mamus

A stunning and intimate portrait of the Arhuaco indigenous community in Colombia. In 1990, in a celebrated BBC documentary, the Arhuaco made contact with the outside world to warn industrialized societies of the potentially catastrophic future facing the planet if we don’t change our ways. Now, three decades later, with the advances of audio/visual technology, we go back to the Snowy Peaks of Sierra Nevada de Santa Maria to illuminate their ethos against the backdrop of an increasingly fragile world.

Circle of the Sun

A young man of the Kainai Nation (Blood tribe) shows us contemporary life of people as he attends a Sun Dance ceremony with the tribe.

The Sheik

When Khosrow Vaziri became the World Wrestling Federations Iron Sheik and camel-clutched his way to fame in the 1980s, he achieved the American Dream by personifying a foreign villain. Losing his world championship belt to Hulk Hogan became a defining moment in professional wrestling. These days, the Sheiks smackdowns are on Twitter, where hes gained a new following. Once an Olympic hopeful, bodyguard to Irans Shah and pop culture icon, we witness Vaziri struggling with addiction and despair as a family man. But with the help of Torontos Magen brothers, the Sheik begins a road to redemption and renewed status as a public figure. Showcasing his powerful past and at times painful present, this is an insightful look at one of wrestlings biggest stars, but also a powerful story of personal sacrifice that, in the Sheiks own words, will make you humble.

Time in the Sun

Second attempt to create a feature film out of the 200,000-plus feet of film which Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein shot during 1931-32 in Mexico for American socialist author Upton Sinclair, his wife and a small company of investors. The projected film, to be called "Que Viva Mexico", was never completed due to exhaustion of funds and Stalin's demand that Eisenstein return to the USSR (he had been absent since 1929). The first attempt at editing the footage, in the USA, resulted in "Thunder Over Mexico", released in 1934. In 1940, Marie Seton, from the UK, acquired some of the footage from the Sinclairs in an attempt to make a better cutting according to Eisenstein's skeletal outline for the proposed film. This film has apparently been lost.

Nossos Sonhos pela Janela

In a dystopian Midwestern future, five children embark on a journey to an abandoned school to find a long-lost treasure. In the present, the same children learn about environmental preservation and reflect on their own futures.

Hannah Arendt, la liberté d'être libre

In a time of resurgence of social protests, political radicalization and distrust of power, Arendt's thought has never been more relevant: A critical thinker according to some or a conservative according to others, this great figure of the intellectual world remains, in many ways, an enigma. Who was Hannah Arendt?

DER INNERE RUF

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Our Body

In a Parisian public hospital, Claire Simon questions what it means to live in women’s bodies, filming their diversity, singularity and their beauty in all stages throughout life. Unique stories of desires, fears and struggles unfold, including the one of the filmmaker herself.

The Found Photo

Pierre Primetens was born on 22 April 1974, three days before the Carnation Revolution which put an end to the Portuguese dictatorship. He spent the first years of his childhood in Chaville, not far from Versailles and regularly took family trips to Portugal, until the death of his mother. Then his life takes another turn. Memories pile up, and photos of his childhood and his family get lost or destroyed. Retracing and understanding the events that marked his biography and determined his being become a fundamental step for him to survive. Consequently, he decides to tell his story by borrowing the images of others.

Prinzessinnenbad

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

The Big One

The Big One is an investigative documentary from director Michael Moore who goes around the country asking why big American corporations produce their product abroad where labor is cheaper while so many Americans are unemployed, losing their jobs, and would happily be hired by such companies as Nike.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a Christian summer camp where children hone their "prophetic gifts" and are schooled in how to "take back America for Christ". The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore's view on how the Bush administration allegedly used the tragic events on 9/11 to push forward its agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Raccolta del pistacchio di Bronte D.O.P.

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Polvere in Sala

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Collisions, Life and Death from Outer Space

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López

An intimate portrait of Marcos López, unique and unclassifiable figure, film director, visual artist and one of the most prominent contemporary photographers in Latin America.

Welcome Home: Mary Reber and the Twin Peaks Palmer House

An extensive interview with Palmer house owner and one-time Twin Peaks performer Mary Reber, with newly unearthed history and information about the home, and the behind the scenes surrounding the iconic location.

Los visionadores

The venerable VHS may have surprises. A strange spell captures the protagonists, who are friends, and submerges them straight into the world of the most implausible Argentine cop films. An amazing flow of images lost, forgotten and recovered whose consumption threatens to become addictive.

Warriors of the Discotheque

The place is the notorious Starck Club (so called because it was the first major project designed by Philippe Starck in the US.) The Starck Club opened in Dallas in 1984 and not long after hosted the 1984 national Republican Convention. Ironically, it was actually legal to buy MDMA aka ecstasy there, people would put it on their credit cards. The DEA stepped in and made it a category 1 drug on July 1, 1985... In a time when ecstasy was legal & guyliner was cool.

Silenced

Three National Security whistleblowers fight to reveal the darkest corners of America's war on terror, challenging a government that is increasingly determined to maintain secrecy.

Super Duper Alice Cooper

Emerging from the Detroit music scene of the 1970s in a flurry of long hair and sequins, Alice Cooper restored hard rock with a sense of showmanship, while simultaneously striking fear into the hearts of Middle America with the chicken-slaughtering, dead-baby-eating theatrics that would cement his identity as a glam metal icon. Meticulously crafted from rare archival footage, Super Duper Alice Cooper tells the story of the man behind the makeup, Vincent Furnier, the son of a preacher, who got caught in the grip of his own monster.

Fifty Years Later

After an initial meeting in 1964 interrupted by military dictatorship and a new meeting in the early 1980s to end the film "Twenty Years Later", Eduardo Coutinho once again find Elizabeth Teixeira, survivor of peasant struggles.

Sobreviventes de Galileia

In January 2013, Eduardo Coutinho back to Pernambuco to rediscover two of the characters in "Twenty Years Later" (1984): Cicero and João José.

Eddie Cochran & Friends: C'mon Everybody

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