{"id":134042,"date":"2025-08-10T09:48:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/134042\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T09:48:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T09:48:14","slug":"william-s-burroughs-takes-center-stage-in-an-arty-new-york-time-capsule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/134042\/","title":{"rendered":"William S. Burroughs Takes Center Stage In An Arty New York Time Capsule"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tImagine going to a gig where The Rolling Stones\u2019 Keith Richards<\/a> couldn\u2019t make it, so Patti Smith<\/a> stepped up to break the news, read you a poem, offered you your money back from her own pocket, and Frank Zappa<\/a> filled in for him instead. Let\u2019s go even further. Imagine it wasn\u2019t really a gig at all, but a multimedia celebration of an author \u2014 William S. Burroughs<\/a> (1914-1997) \u2014 a superstar counterculture writer whose shadow loomed large over the \u201960s in ways that could never be replicated today. Compiled from original footage of the three-day event that took place in 1978 at Manhattan\u2019s Entermedia Theater (now the Village East, a shortish walk to CBGB\u2019s), Nova \u201978 is an immersive time capsule that captures the arty essence of New York in the aftermath of punk and offers yet more proof that Burroughs was way ahead of anyone else in terms of political futurology.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of this was shot, at the time and on the hoof, at the gnomically titled Nova Convention by Howard Brookner, subject of co-director Aaron Brookner<\/a>\u2019s personal 2016 documentary Uncle Howard, and, if you don\u2019t know much about the art-rock-lit scene of the time, there are no concessions made. Even if you do know, there are surprises: a cringingly awkward interpretive dance performed to a tone poem turns out to be a collaboration between\u2026 oh, Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Directors Brookner and Rodrigo Areias wisely leave that kind of information to the end, which is perhaps how it should be, since the event itself unfolded that way (Brookner\u2019s sound man was a then-very-unknown Jim Jarmusch). This, after all, was a time when a new kind of culture was emerging from the ashes of the \u201960s, and, certainly, some of the names popping up \u2014 Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Brion Gysin\u00a0\u2014 were pretty long in the tooth by then.<\/p>\n

\n\tThankfully, American punk wasn\u2019t quite so myopic on the subject of age, compared to the youth-focused rebellion engendered in the U.K. by The Sex Pistols. This is reflected in Easy Rider screenwriter Terry Southern\u2019s now-famous introduction to the event, describing Burroughs as \u201cgrand, groovy and beloved\u201d before referencing the then-recent mass suicide that had just taken place at Jonestown in Guyana. Taking the stage, in a very dark and punk-inflected moment, Burroughs then riffs on that, pretending to read a note from Dr. Benway, a notorious character from his 1959 novel Naked Lunch, and making a dark excuse for his non-appearance (\u201cI have a few more calls to make tonight\u2026\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s not much explanation as to what the Nova Convention actually is, and, at the start of the film, Burroughs is asked to to describe it. He can\u2019t, most likely because the film is very much a reflection of New York in that instant; at the age of 64, he\u2019s just there, in the middle of this strange cultural moment, at a time when the country is experiencing an identity crisis and his more recent readers are finally starting to understand what he\u2019s always been on about. In the\u201960s, his past heroin addiction was seen as rebellious and somehow even cool, but in the post-Watergate \u201970s it had become a very chilling metaphor for societal control.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn that respect, as a documentary, some may find Nova \u201978 somewhat forbidding, especially when Burroughs finally lays out his manifesto, which is basically that space is the future, but not quite for the same reason Elon Musk thinks it is. Citing mankind\u2019s dependence on \u201cthe aqualung of time\u201d, Burroughs suggests that we need a whole new dimension, not just more of the same in different surroundings. \u201cIt is necessary to travel,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is not necessary \u2014 and it\u2019s becoming increasingly difficult \u2014 to live.\u201d All of this, however, goes over everybody\u2019s heads because it seems, well, like science fiction, which is the area of the bookshop that most of Burroughs\u2019s books used to end up in.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut while it is very much a look back at history, Nova \u201978 also shows Burroughs as a prognosticator; though he seems stoically bewildered by some of the tributes performed in his name back then, there is not a chance in hell that he would be surprised by the state of the world today. He wanted out years ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle:<\/strong> Nova \u201978\u2019
Festival:<\/strong> Locarno<\/a> (Out of Competition)
Directors:<\/strong> Aaron Brookner, Rodrigo Areias
International sales:<\/strong> Pinball London
Running time:<\/strong> 1 hr 18 mins <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine going to a gig where The Rolling Stones\u2019 Keith Richards couldn\u2019t make it, so Patti Smith stepped…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[81053,5229,81054,43452,74855,405,403,5226,5225,81055,5228,5227,10335,2290,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,81056],"class_list":{"0":"post-134042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-aaron-brookner","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-frank-zappa","11":"tag-keith-richards","12":"tag-locarno","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-nova-78","18":"tag-ny","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-patti-smith","21":"tag-review","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-william-s-burroughs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115003844735221261","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}