Chappaqua

Starring Jean-Louis Barrault, Conrad Rooks, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ravi Shankar, The Fugs, Swami Satchidananda, Moondog, Ornette Coleman / Music by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass / Cinematography by Robert Frank

Chappaqua, set in the small New York town of the same name, was the brainchild of Conrad Rooks, a forgotten psychedelic-era explorer, associate of numerous legendary beat figures, and luckily for him, son of the Avon Corporation’s CEO.

Funded by an inheritance from his fathers sudden death, and “shocked into the futility of an existence dependent on alcohol and drugs” Rooks decided to make a film revisioning his own drug treatments in Switzerland (as a way of keeping himself clean). The film, largely improvised and influenced heavily by Burroughs anti-structuring strategies, unfolds as a series of fragmented visual trips, replete with outrageous cinematic effects, as the protagonist undergoes a mysterious “sleep treatment” Starring William S. Burroughs (as Opium Jones, the ‘spirit of heroin), with cameos by Allen Ginsberg, The Fugs (performing at a New York acid party while stomping on sugar cubes that spell out the letters “LSD”), Moondog and Ornette Coleman, shot by the great American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank (The Americans, Cocksucker Blues, Pull My Daisy), and with a score co written by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass, Chappaqua is a quintessential document of 60’s counter-culture.

Winner of the Silver Lion at the 1966 Venice Film Festival.