Nova '78

Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, John Cage… Quite a line-up. In the autumn of 1978, New York’s East Village played host to the three-day Nova Convention, a multidisciplinary celebration held in honour of writer William S. Burroughs.

Resurrected through archival restoration, Nova ’78 is assembled from previously unseen and unheard material shot and recorded by Howard Brookner, Tom DiCillo and Jim Jarmusch. Poetry, performance art and music converged in a singular moment of artistic possibility. Rather than explaining its subject, the film allows the 16mm images to speak for themselves. The optimism of the era shimmers through the footage. Burroughs himself drifts through the film like a ghost. He is everywhere and nowhere at once: present, yet strangely out of reach. As if he had already glimpsed the future and lost his faith.