William S. Burroughs Movies

Island of La Réunion, in the beginning of the 20th century. Five teenagers commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to...

Inspired by the German folktale, Wilhelm, a file clerk, falls in love with a huntsman's daughter. In order to marry, Wilhelm must prove his worth as...

An indictment ballad of all the different political groups in America.

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...

Burroughs takes down a book and reads us the story of Danny the Carwiper, who spends Christmas Day trying to score a fix, but finds the Christmas...

Celebrities and creatives -- including musician David Byrne, performance artist Spalding Gray, comedian Sandra Bernhard, radical activist Abbie...

Peter Gidal’s starting point for his 16mm film was a soundtrack that consists of three lines from a 1,000 word story written by Gidal in 1971,...

A concert film directed by and featuring the music of Laurie Anderson, filmed at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, during the summer of...

An exploration of Burroughs’ life story, as told by Burroughs himself along with many of his contemporaries, including Allen Ginsberg, Brion...

F.M. discovers that different sonic frequencies induce different patterns of behaviour in listeners, first in his own studio but later in the local...

An ironic New York City thriller involving a mafioso and a restless, witty lawyer.

Gidal describes the film’s ‘so-called imagery’ as ‘a complex of barely visible cuts in space and time, the opposite of...

Portland, 1988. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant shoots Drugstore Cowboy, the project that will bring he and his collaborators a formidable burst of mainstream...

A chronological account of the influential late 1970s English rock band.

An exhaustive examination of cut-ups, the control machine, and the algebra of need figure in this epic found-footage adaptation of Burroughs’s...

A look at the life and work of American publisher Barney Rosset, who struggled to bring controversial works like "Tropic of Cancer" and "Naked Lunch"...

A look at the mystique of road movies, combining interviews, film clips, music, photography, literature and a narrative storyline featuring Paul Rudd...

A 1992 documentary about the making of Naked Lunch.

Filmmaker Larry Weinstein stages a wide range of performances in tribute to the compositions of Kurt Weill.

"The Discipline of D.E." is a short 16mm film directed by Gus Van Sant. It’s based on a story in “Exterminator!” by William...