Robert Frank

Harry Smith at the Breslin Hotel (2017)

The 94-year-old Robert Frank's unique recordings of his fellow artists Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg, which he had salvaged from his own archive for Harry Smith at the Breslin Hotel. ...

Alfred Leslie: Cool Man In A Golden Age (2009)

Alfred Leslie is a pivotal American artist-painter-filmmaker whose work spans the past fifty years. A contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists and a key figure in the extraordinary social milieu of downtown New York from the 1950s and 60s to the present ...

Sanyu (2005)

Sanyu (1901-1964), an important Chinese artist, was a friend of Robert Frank's who died in anonymity in Paris. In this film portrait, Frank creates a requiem that includes dramatic and documentary scenes set in Paris, and a chronicle of his trip to Taipei ...

True Story (2004)

"Tell the truth and shame the devil": Robert Frank had turned 80 when he set out to make True Story, repurposing still photographs, home movies, and excerpts of completed films to reflect on memory and resilience. Moments of delight (a lobster claw and wig ...

Paper Route (2002)

In a simple, sensitive and entertaining video film, Robert Frank accompanies his local newspaper delivery boy during his morning round one chilly winter day in Nova Scotia. ...

The Present (1996)

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 ill ...

Flamingo (1996)

Is this house getting built or demolished? Robert Frank's poetic visual report packed with disorienting close-ups leaves it up to the viewer to decide. ...

Last Supper (1992)

In an empty lot in Harlem, an elite group of New Yorkers prepares for a book-signing party given in honor of a writer who never shows up. Local residents, dealing with the practicality of life, look on as the guests obsess about identity, status, and succe ...

One Hour (1990)

One of the longest handheld tracking shots in film history, It's Real documents an hour in the street life of downtown Manhattan. Not only is it a unique record of a particular time and place—July 26, 1990, from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. in the Lower East Side n ...

Hunter (1989)

In the words of Robert Frank, Hunter is about ". . . a man whose destiny is not to find a destination. . . . A man who fears that he will never find what his imagination compels him to look for, a mystical traveler going by train and by car through . . . l ...

Candy Mountain (1988)

A mediocre musician goes on the road in search of the world's greatest guitar maker. ...

Home Improvements (1985)

Home Improvements, Robert Frank's first video project, is a simple and poignant diary of consequential events. It is about the relationship between Frank's life as an artist and his personal life, and how the two are inevitably intertwined. It was made che ...

This Song for Jack (1983)

In 1982, Robert Frank was on hand at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to film the Jack Kerouac Conference, a 25th-anniversary commemoration of On the Road in which poignantly aging Beats and fellow-traveling authors, activists, and composers (All ...

Energy and How to Get It (1981)

Filmed in Wendover, Nevada, in early 1981, Energy and How to Get It combines documentary and fictional ideas. What began as a documentary film about Robert Golka, an engineer who was experimenting with ball lightning and the development of fusion as an ene ...

Life Dances On... (1980)

Life Dances On is Robert Frank's most personal and emotional work because it deals directly with his family and close friends. The film is dedicated to his daughter Andrea and to his friend and collaborator Danny Seymour, both deceased. Life Dances On is c ...

Keep Busy (1975)

The protagonists' astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue, this film is reminiscent of the playful and parodying elements of the Beat fant ...

Sunseed (1973)

This documentary explores the growing American interest in the 1970s in Eastern religions and philosophy. The teachings and lifestyles of ten spiritual teachers and their followers are presented without voice-over narration. ...

About Us (1972)

In Fall of 1971, artist Robert Frank came to Rochester, NY to conduct a course on filmmaking at the recently established alternative art school, Visual Studies Workshop. By the time he came to Rochester, Frank had made seven films and was in production on ...

Food (1972)

This film documents the legendary SoHo restaurant and artists' cooperative Food, which opened in 1971. Owned and operated by Caroline Goodden, Food was designed and built largely by Matta-Clark, who also organized art events and performances there. As a so ...

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

This fly-on-the-wall documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their 1972 North American Tour, their first return to the States since the tragedy at Altamont. ...

About Me: A Musical (1971)

A Musical Set in New York City ...

Conversations in Vermont (1971)

Produced in 1969, this was Frank's first autobiographical film, telling the story of a father's relationship with his two teenaged children, and his fragile attempts to communicate with them by means of a shared story. The shared story is partly told throu ...

Life-Raft Earth (1969)

Liferaft Earth opens with a newspaper report from Hayward, California: "Sandwiched between a restaurant and supermarket, 100 anti-population protesters spent their second starving day in a plastic enclosure...The so-called Hunger Show, a week-long starve-i ...

Me and My Brother (1969)

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 ...

Chappaqua (1966)

Semi-autobiographical story of Conrad Rooks, who travels to France to undergo a drug-withdrawal cure. Flashbacks to the beginings of psychedelia in San Fran. Though initially confusing, as Rooks blends drug-illusion with reality, and cuts color with black- ...

O.K. End Here (1963)

O.K. 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 Miche ...

The Sin of Jesus (1961)

An egg-sorting woman shrugs off even the appearance of Christ. From Isaak Babel story. ...

Pull My Daisy (1959)

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, wi ...

Don't Blink - Robert Frank (2015)

The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formid ...

Life Goes On (2015)

Robert Frank Films (2006)

Filmed during the shooting of the Sin of Jesus 1960, this film includes Robert Frank, Dick Bellamy, Mary Frank, and others. ...

Sanyu (2005)

Sanyu (1901-1964), an important Chinese artist, was a friend of Robert Frank's who died in anonymity in Paris. In this film portrait, Frank creates a requiem that includes dramatic and documentary scenes set in Paris, and a chronicle of his trip to Taipei ...

Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank (2004)

A documentary on the photographer Robert Frank. ...

Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom (2000)

Full Blossom: The Life Of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom takes a look at Blossom's work onscreen, as well as the man behind the camera, examining his political and spiritual convictions, his belief in reincarnation (Blossom is certain his son was Michelangelo ...

Second Century (1999)

A small film crew goes through several locations including Europe, New York and Mexico. ...

The Present (1996)

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 ill ...

Home Improvements (1985)

Home Improvements, Robert Frank's first video project, is a simple and poignant diary of consequential events. It is about the relationship between Frank's life as an artist and his personal life, and how the two are inevitably intertwined. It was made che ...

Contemporary Photography in America (1982)

The film of Michael Engler from the year 1982 showing the different methods of operation of photgraphers Harry Callahan, Mark Cohen, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Garry Winogrand and others ...

Lost, Lost, Lost (1976)

Drawn from footage shot between 1949 and 1963, Jonas Mekas's autobiographical diary film chronicles his early years in exile, capturing the struggle to build a new life in New York and his gradual discovery of a vibrant artistic community. ...