Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Uncle Howard

For Pride 2022 • 1h 36m

Directed by Aaron Brookner • Documentary • With Aaron Brookner, John Giorno, Tom DiCillo, Elaine Brookner, Sara Driver, William S. Burroughs
Jim Jarmusch, Madonna, 
Robert Wilson • 2016 • 96 minutes

Uncle Howard is an intertwining tale of past and present. New York filmmaker Howard Brookner died of AIDS in 1989, while making his breakthrough Hollywood movie. His body of work, which captured the late 70s and early 80s cultural revolution, was buried in William S. Burroughs’ bunker for 30 years. Now in a personal journey, his nephew Aaron unearths Howard's filmmaking legacy and the memory of everything he was.

Through conversations with family and close friends – including Jim Jarmusch, Tom DiCillo, Sara Driver, Hisami Kuroiwa, Brad Gooch, James Grauerholz and Robert Wilson – comes an exploration into the eruption of the AIDS plague, sex, drugs, politics, and the artistic determination of a filmmaker whose life was cut short.

Featuring long-lost footage and archival photos of William Burroughs, Patti Smith, John Giorno, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Paula Court, Terry Southern, Andy Warhol, Spike Lee, John Waters, Francis Bacon, Matt Dillon, Madonna, and more, Uncle Howard reveals a portrait of the tumultuous and mysterious life, struggles, and untimely death of Howard Brookner.

Tags
activism., aids, beat generation, beatnik, biography, counterculture, documentary, expository, film archive, film preservation, gay, gentrification, lgbtq+, new york city, ovid, uncle howard, william burroughs, william burroughs;doc;sociss;lgb;bio;

Up Next in For Pride 2022

  • Sebastiane
    1:25:28
    Sebastiane

    Sebastiane

    Directed by Derek Jarman • Drama • With Leonard Treviglio, Barney James, Richard Warwick, Neil Kennedy • 2012 • 85 minutes

    Derek Jarman's (Caravaggio) feature film debut (co-directing with Paul Humfress), Sebastiane is a "one of a kind" (Time Out London) historical drama which lays bare the lat...

  • Blue
    1:15:57
    Blue

    Blue

    Directed by Derek Jarman • Documentary • With Derek Jarman • 1993 • 76 minutes

    In his final—and most daring—cinematic statement, Jarman the romantic meets Jarman the iconoclast in a lush soundscape pulsing against a purely blue screen. Laying bare his physical and spiritual state in a narration ...

  • Before Stonewall: Restored Edition
    1:27:12
    Before Stonewall: Restored Edition

    Before Stonewall: Restored Edition

    Directed by Directed by Greta Schiller; Co-Directed by Robert Rosenberg • Documentary • With Rita Mae Brown, Ann Bannon, Martin Duberman, Allen Ginsberg, Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Audre Lorde, Harry Hay • 1984 • 87 minutes

    In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenw...

×