Samuel Beckett

Barney's Wall

What makes a rebel? This 78 minute documentary probes the psyche of bad-boy publisher and free speech warrior Barney Rosset, whose mid-century legal and cultural battles smashed sexual and political taboos in the United States — unleashing the counter-culture of the 1960s and introducing millions of young intellectuals to the most radical currents in literature, film, theater and politics. In his late eighties, coming to terms with his life, Barney Rosset began to obsessively sculpt an autobiographical 15′ x 22′ surreal wall mural, embedded with jewel-like vignettes crafted out of found objects, each a clue to the conflicts and obsessions that drove Barney’s lifetime rebellion against authority. A cast of artists, a neurologist, and a shaman connect the clues and piece together Barney’s life.

Notfilm

NOTFILM is a feature-length experimental essay on FILM -- its author Samuel Beckett, its star Buster Keaton, its production and its philosophical implications -- utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.

Waiting for Beckett

Biography and in-depth look of Beckett and his work.

Samuel Beckett: Silence to Silence

The elusive author of Waiting for Godot cooperated in the production of this portrait, which traces Beckett’s artistic life through his prose, plays, and poetry. Billie Whitelaw, Jack McGowran, and Patrick Magee—Beckett’s great dramatic interpreters—appear in selected extracts from the plays; Beckett specialist David Warrilow narrates a variety of texts.

Making Samuel Beckett's 'Rockaby'

The filmmakers accompany Alan Schneider, director of the American premieres of most of Beckett's plays, and producer Daniel Labeille to the home of Billie Whitelaw, whom Schneider, ironically, had never met previously, and takes us through the rehearsal process of Beckett's newest play, including the recording of the dialogue, as almost all of it is voiceover. The final fifteen minutes of the film are the premiere performance in its entirety.

Beckett in Berlin

A short film by Rosa von Praunheim

Samuel Beckett - Mute Interview

A wordless, silent interview with Samuel Beckett for Swedish Television after Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

If I Had Four Dromedaries

Composed entirely of still photographs shot by Marker himself over the course of his restless travel through twenty-six countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries stages a probing, at times agitated, search for the meanings of the photographic image, in the form of an extended voiceover conversation and debate between the "amateur photographer" credited with the images and two of his colleagues. Anticipating later writings by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag (who professed her admiration for the film) If I Had Four Dromedaries reveals Marker's instinctual understanding of the secret rapport between still and moving image.