Steidlville

Robert Frank The Complete Film Works fills a long overdue gap by presenting every one of Frank’s more than 25 films and videos, some of them classics of the New American Cinema of the 1950s and 60s.

This Song for Jack – 30 minutes – 1983

In 1982, a number of people gathered in Boulder, Colorado for a conference held at the Naropa Institute, a house in the country. This meeting honoured the memory of Jack Kerouac. This Song for Jack depicts a reading held in the rain from Kerouac’s “On the Road” for a group of six listeners. Frank demonstrates that art is a matter for a small circle, and it is always, regardless of the specific situation, a form of mourning.

Ginsberg/Corso Reading – 8 minutes

Hunter – 37 minutes – 1989

An American visits Germany’s Ruhrgebiet. His name is Hunter, and he’s touring the area around Duisburg. A travelogue? Maybe. Somewhere between the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, in the country’s industrialized midwest, he meets some locals. An ethnological project? Possibly. His attempts to establish contact with the people there are unsuccessful. But he keeps trying to understand how someone can live in this area and cope with it. An essay? That too.