Robert Frank

A film by photographer Robert Frank on the Rolling Stone's 1972 American tour. Not released by the Stones because it contained scenes of drug use and groupie orgies.

Milo is a railroad brakeman, his wife a painter. They have some poet friends who spend a good bit of time hanging out at their apartment. When Milo and his wife are visited by their bishop, they naturally would like their friends to be on their best behavior. But poets will be poets. (imdb)

A struggling musician sets out to find the legendary guitar maker Elmore Silk, with whom he hopes to strike a deal to make himself rich and famous. (imdb)

Commissioned by French television, Robert Frank shot one hour of video footage using many of his regulars: Peter Orlovsky (Pull My Daisy, Me and My Brother), Kevin O'Connor (Candy Mountain), Taylor Mead, Bill Rice, Tom Jarmusch and a host of first-timers. The result is a part scripted but mostly improv ramble through the Lower East Side and downtown Manhattan, in one take. (imdb)

Simple objects, photographs, and events prompt Frank to self-conscious rumination. From his homes in New York and Nova Scotia and on visits to friends, the artist contemplates his relationships, the anniversary of his daughter's death, his son's mental illness, and his work.

Julius Orlovsky, after spending years in a New York mental hospital, emerges catatonic and must rely on his brother Peter, who lives with poet Allen Ginsberg. When Julius wanders off in the middle of filming, Frank hires and actor (Joseph Chaikin) to play the character and begins a fictional version of his psychological portrait. Then, as suddenly as he vanished, Julius turns up in an institution where he and Peter must face their relationship. (imdb)

The Sin of Jesus was based on the story of Isaac Babel, a woman on a chicken farm who spends her days working at an egg-sorting machine. She is pregnant, her husband spends his days lying in bed, and his friends encourage him to go out on the town with them. The woman talks to herself as she works, lost in the monotony of human existence. She counts the passing days in the same way she counts eggs. Even extraordinary events go under the stream of this melancholy solipsism.

Conversations in Vermont is about Robert Frank's relationship with his children, Pablo and Andrea. Frank follows them to school (in Vermont) and interviews them about their feelings, their upbringing, and what it was like to grow up in a bohemian world with artists as parents. (MUBI)

OK End Here is Frank's 1963 short film about inertia in a modern relationship. The film alternates between semidocumentary scenes and shots composed with rigid formality, and appears to have been directly influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague and Michelangelo Antonioni's films. (MUBI)

The main characters (lawyer - son - wife - oriental girl - actor - a colleague) are getting ready for a book-signing party given to honor the writer. The event plays in an empty lot in Harlem. Fragments of the writer's old video tapes will interrupt the footage prior to the party. (MUBI)

In 1984, upon learning that his friend Harry Smith was being evicted from the Breslin Hotel, Allen Ginsberg encouraged Robert Frank to use his new video camera to document the move. Over a one-week period, Smith shows Frank examples of his collection of art, books, indigenous recordings and films. (mubi.com)