John Ashbery

A look at post-9/11 America by the Danish documentarian.

A silent screen-type comedy starring Edwin Denby as Hemlock Stinge, the unlovable billionaire.

In the summer of 1952, poets John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler collaborated with filmmakers Harrison Starr and John Latouche on a short film in tribute to their mutual friend, the painter Jane Freilicher.

The writings and movie memories of renowned poet John Ashbery are refracted in a kaleidoscope of film clips that open up an illuminating dialogue between his work and cinema

A tortuous journey, in the company of the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, around the figure of the enigmatic and visionary French poet Raymond Roussel (1877-1933).

In the years after World War II the New York School of Poets set a new agenda for American literature with poetry that did not shy away from common language, cliches and humor. The core of the movement was a small group of writers including Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O'Hara and his friends John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch.

"The poet Daisy Aldan (who brought Gerard Malanga into the world of experimental filmmaking) directed a beautifully evocative and impressionistic documentary, Once Upon an El, in 8mm color with a 7 1/2 ips tape soundtrack. The 15-minute film's cast included John Ashberry, James Broughton, Chester Kallman, Frank O'Hara, Olga Petroff, Kermit Sheets, and other luminaries of the Avant-Garde, the soundtrack was composed by Storm de Hirsch. Once Upon An El documented the activities of a group of writers and composers...[demonstrating] against the demolition of New York's Third Avenue elevated railway (FMC 1967, 7-8) , which was demolished anyway" - Wheeler Winston Dixon

The American poet John Ashbery. Shot one day when he visited the Factory. His suspicious expression does relax somewhat in the course of the film; towards the end, he appears momentarily lost in his own thoughts.