Allen Ginsberg — Actor (49)
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
The daring experimenter Dr. John C. Lilly dedicated his life to radical self-investigation and unlocking the mysteries of consciousness and communication. “My body is my laboratory” was the motto, and his research on the language of dolphins and whales – as well as psychedelics and sensory deprivation – assured his own cult status in 20th-century pop culture as the basis for Ken Russel’s Altered States and Mike Nichols’s The Day of the Dolphin. Directors Michael Almareyda and Courtney Stephens, along with narrator Chloë Sevigny, explore the life of a determined scientist and his experiments into the psychonautical unknown.
Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (2011) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
CRAZY WISDOM explores the arrival of Tibetan Buddhism in America through the story of Chögyam Trungpa, who landed in the U.S. in 1970. Trungpa became renowned for translating ancient Buddhist concepts into language and ideas that Westerners could understand and shattered preconceived notions about how an enlightened teacher should behave. Initially rejected, his teachings are now recognized by western philosophers and spiritual leaders as authentic and profound.
Condo Painting (2000) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Condo Painting
John McNaughton's spotlight on George Condo and his art. The film, which follows the progress of Condo's large-scale oil painting Big Red over the course of one year, features an appearance by Allen Ginsberg, as well as footage of Condo collaborating with William S. Burroughs on paintings the two made together at Burroughs' Kansas home in the mid-1990s.
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV (2023) [Movie] IMDb WikiData TMDB
Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
director: Amanda Kim actor: Steven Yeun / Nam June Paik
The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.
Galaxie (1966) [Movie] TMDB IMDb WikiData
Galaxie
director: Gregory J. Markopoulos actor: Parker Tyler / Storm De Hirsch
In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
ChickenHawk (1994) [Movie] TMDB IMDb WikiData
ChickenHawk
director: Adi Sideman actor: Barbara Adler / Mimi Turner
other title: Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys
Members of the controversial group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) discuss why their organization supports "boys and men who have or desire engagements in sexual or emotional relationships."
Bed Peace (1969) [Movie] TMDB WikiData IMDb
Bed Peace
director: John Lennon / Yoko Ono actor: John Lennon / Yoko Ono
John and Yoko in the presidential suite at the Hilton Amsterdam, which they had decorated with hand-drawn signs above their bed reading "Bed Peace." They invited the global press into their room to discuss peace for 12 hours every day.
Me and My Brother (1969) [Movie] WikiData IMDb TMDB
Me and My Brother
director: Robert Frank actor: Julius Orlovsky / Peter Orlovsky
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 the character and begins a fictional version of his psychological portrait. Then, as suddenly as he vanished, Julius turns up in an institution where he and Peter must face their relationship.
No. 18: Mahagonny (1980) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
No. 18: Mahagonny
director: Harry Smith actor: Patti Smith / Allen Ginsberg
Harry Smith’s final film; an epic four-screen projection. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.
The Fall (1969) [Movie] TMDB IMDb WikiData
The Fall
director: Peter Whitehead actor: Peter Whitehead / Alberta Tiburzi
"The Fall" depicts certain scenes in New York City between October 1967 and March 1968, shot by the independent filmmaker, Peter Whitehead. It is a very personal documentary, and Whitehead appears in a large number of scenes, and we hear his lengthy ruminations on the state of the United States and the war in Vietnam.
Joan of Arc (1967) [Movie] TMDB
Joan of Arc
director: Piero Heliczer actor: Ira Cohen / Tony Conrad
The story of Joan of Arc as applied to the present revolution in arts and more. The Gothic is applied to the War in Vietnam. The film is experimental in the sense that in it the visual becomes tactile.
Renaldo and Clara (1978) [Movie] TMDB IMDb WikiData
Renaldo and Clara
director: Bob Dylan actor: Bob Dylan / Sara Dylan
other title: Renaldo e Clara / Renaldo und Clara
Filmed in the autumn of 1975 prior to and during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour – featuring appearances and performances by Ronee Blakley, T-Bone Burnett, Jack Elliott, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson, Arlen Roth, Phil Ochs, Sam Shepard, and Harry Dean Stanton – the film incorporates three distinct film genres: concert footage, documentary interviews, and dramatic fictional vignettes reflective of Dylan's song lyrics and life.
Stockhausen's Originale: Doubletakes (1964) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Stockhausen's Originale: Doubletakes
director: Peter Moore actor: Karlheinz Stockhausen / Allan Kaprow
This fascinating film documents the U.S. premiere production of Originale, a Happening by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Filmed at the "2nd Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York," which was produced by Norman Seaman and Charlotte Moorman, the stage production was directed by Allan Kaprow. Performers include Nam June Paik, Moorman, Jackson Mac Low and Allen Ginsberg, among many others.
Happy Birthday to John (1997) [Movie] IMDb TMDB
Happy Birthday to John
director: Jonas Mekas actor: John Lennon / Yoko Ono
On October 9, 1972, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse hosted an exhibition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s work, designed by Fluxus artist George Maciunas. That same day, friends including Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krassner gathered to celebrate Lennon’s birthday. Jonas Mekas’s film records the event in both image and sound, capturing the spirit of the moment and the community around Lennon and Ono.
Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds (1979) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds
director: Costanzo Allione actor: Allen Ginsberg / Peter Orlovsky
After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family (1971) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Breathing Together: Revolution of the Electric Family
director: Morley Markson actor: Don Cox / Buckminster Fuller
The title of this Canadian documentary may have some relation to Canadian Marshall McLuhan's theories. It combines interview with famous U.S. militants of the '60s, such as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, with reenactments of their Chicago trials (i.e., the "Chicago Eight," etc.). Other figures of cultural interest from the time, including Alan Ginsberg and Buckminster Fuller, are interviewed or featured. The filmmaker indicates his belief that powerful forces in the U.S. government worked together to suppress American radicals. This view, widely disbelieved at the time, has since been confirmed.
Pickup's Tricks (1973) [Movie] TMDB IMDb
Pickup's Tricks
director: Gregory Pickup actor: Allen Ginsberg / Hibiscus
Pickup's Tricks is a beat documentary of Hibiscus and the Cockettes, who were pioneers of San Francisco’s underground queer theater in the early '70s. It is a multifarious blend of sexual anarchy; a raucous and unscripted mix of liberation and elation as rough and spirited as the lifestyle that created it. The film profiles Hibiscus, founding member of the Cockettes, the psychedelic drag queens that performed midnight musicals at the Palace Theater in San Francisco. The film includes a rare screen appearance of Allen Ginsberg, clean-shaven and costumed in "acute drag" as a Yiddishe Mama with a painted-on third eye. (pickupstricks.com)