Norman Mailer

A portrait of the brilliant American writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and the New York high society of his time.

From Brooklyn beginnings to literary pantheon, Norman Mailer's unorthodox trajectory spans marriages, offspring, and accolades. An unprecedented glimpse into the preeminent 20th-century author's private and public worlds through intimate biography.

A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) was undoubtedly one of the greatest names in film criticism. A Californian native, she wrote her first review in 1953 and joined ‘The New Yorker’ in 1968. Praised for her highly opinionated and feisty writing style and criticised for her subjective and sometimes ruthless reviews, Kael’s writing was refreshingly and intensely rooted in her experience of watching a film as a member of the audience. Loved and hated in equal measure – loved by other critics for whom she was immensely influential, and hated by filmmakers whose films she trashed - Kael destroyed films that have since become classics such as The Sound of Music and raved about others such as Bonnie and Clyde. She was also aware of the perennial difficulties for women working in the movies and in film criticism, and fiercely fought sexism, both in her reviews and in her media appearances.

Follows the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices.

A provocateur, a rebel, a performer, and a true American, Norman Mailer never stopped giving people something to talk about. This documentary goes beyond the Mailer of the bookshelves and NY Times best seller list to Mailer the social critic, family man, filmmaker, and lover. Here's a look into the life of a complex, intellectual, working class hero. With never before seen footage of Adele Morales Mailer's startling revelations after being stabbed by her husband. Featuring unseen footage and interviews from wives and lovers, enemies and admirers, his children and the man himself.

In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.

Nicholas Jarecki follows director James Toback on the 12-day shoot of his thriller, When Will I Be Loved -- a movie made without a script or distribution deal.

A contrarian and wickedly funny man, this PBS American Masters special explores Gore Vidal's extraordinary life and work, joining him at his cliff-side villa in Ravello, Italy.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

In 1955, Tobias Schneebaum disappeared into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. He had no guide, no map, and only the vaguest of instructions: Keep the river on your right. A year later Schneebaum emerged from the jungle…naked, covered in body paint, and a modern-day cannibal. Titled after Schneebaum’s 1969 cult classic memoir about his formative experiences living in the Amazon, Keep The River On Your Right is the extraordinary stranger-than-fiction story of Schneebaum’s return to the jungle, 45 years after his original visit, to reunite with the very tribesmen he loved and who gave him nightmares for nearly half a century. A deeply affecting and searing portrait, sibling filmmakers Laurie and David Shapiro capture a man in utter conflict, a fearless adventurer, and one of the most charming, enigmatic, and perplexing men ever captured on screen.

Though Henry Kissinger is often giving short statements to the media, he refuses detailed interviews about his own life. Now he has agreed to answer questions about his person in an extensive documentary.

A documentary about the film, I am Curious-Yellow (1967), and how it made it into the USA and changed film in USA forever by breaking the USA Obscenity Codes.

New York in the Fifties is the story of a unique time and place, when New York was the hotbed of new artistic expressions, free love, drinking, hot jazz, and radical politics. The film combines stunning archival footage of New York with interviews and footage of icons of the day-Kerouac, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Mailer, Basie, etc. Offering modern day perspective and reminiscences are writers, actors, and artists such as Joan Didion, Robert Redford, Nat Hentoff, Gay and Nan Talese, John Gregory Dunne, William F. Buckley, and Calvin Trillin-all part of the rich cultural and artistic scene of the time. Based on the best-selling book by Dan Wakefield, the film also traces Wakefield's restless rebellion in conformist Indianapolis, and his escape to New York with dreams of writin ga novel, falling in love, meeting like-minded souls and questioning the meaning of life.

Documentary produced and broadcast in the show "Court Circuit" on Arte.

Norman Mailer frankly discusses American culture, politics, literature, and his own tumultuous life.

Survey Marilyn Monroe’s life through photographs, from Hollywood stills to candid pictures snapped on the streets of New York.

Norman Mailer profiles life in America since the Second World War. Farewell to the Fifties. Mailer fought for his country in the Second World War- an experience that inspired his novel The Naked and the Dead. But, disappointed by post-war America, he grew to despise the fifties.

It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.

Visionary, radical, spiritual seeker, renowned poet, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human rights, Buddhist, political activist and teacher. Extensive archival footage, interviews, and home movies cover Allen Ginsberg's life, activism, and influence on American culture through the Beat era, the 1960s, and beyond.

Malga Kubiak stars in her exploration of sex and self. One woman's love to her own body interlaced with maggots; mixes x-rated porn. Voyeuristically titillating this avant-garde study of horrors of sex.

CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

A descendant of Shakespeare tries to restore his plays in a world rebuilding itself after the Chernobyl catastrophe obliterates most of human civilization.

After Lee Strasberg’s death in 1982, the most prestigious talents from the Actors Studio assumed the leadership of this exceptional organization. For the first time ever, filmmakers have been allowed to film their work.

A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.

An intellectual match between two dramatically different artists, one permanently unsure and frustrated and questioning everything, the other an astonishing storyteller perfectly at peace, unacquainted with introspection and reliant on intuition.

Utitlising humour, fantasy, animation, poetry and theatrics, Hochman and her crew challenge the male establishment for ignoring the first meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus and Shirley Chisholm's bid for US vice-president.

Over a booze-fueled, increasingly hectic five-day shoot in East Hampton, Norman Mailer and his cast and crew spontaneously unloaded onto film the lurid and loony chronicle of U.S. presidential candidate and filmmaker Norman T. Kingsley debating and attacking his hangers-on and enemies. This gonzo narrative, “an inkblot test of Mailer’s own subconscious” (Time), becomes something like a documentary on its own making when costar Rip Torn breaks the fourth wall in one of cinema’s most alarming on-screen outbursts.

One of the human trio is Dick Fontaine, the director, a thin, long-haired youth who has put together this highly personal exercise on something or other that runs, mercifully, for 58 minutes and comes from an English group of movie folk called the Tattooists. The second visitor to the animal abattoir is a pretty girl. The third is a porky, middle-aged man addicted to the expression, "Ya know?" The two men carry on a running argument about whether they should make a picture about pigs. "Are we making a movie, ya know?" says Fatso. "Where is it, ya know?" Then a bit later: "I'm making a movie about pigs, ya know?"

Dick Fontaine documents Norman Mailer’s 1969 bid for the Mayor’s office in New York City. Accompanied by his running mate, Jimmy Breslin, Mailer charismatically works the press and the public with a provocative platform that ultimately fails.

On the evening of April 30, 1971, a standing room only audience of local literati and feminists packed New York City’s Town Hall to watch Norman Mailer, who had just written “The Prisoner of Sex,” grapple with a panel of passionate feminists. The subject was Women’s Liberation, an issue on which Mailer seemed like the devil’s own advocate.

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Takes place over the course of one feverish night in a Manhattan police precinct and neighboring bar.

Portrait of Norman Mailer at the time of the Pentagon demonstrations in 1967, documenting Mailer's involvement and arrest, together with two TV appearances and shooting on the set of his second film 'Beyond the Law'.

Norman Mailer’s first feature filmmaking effort stars the director and his two longtime collaborators Buzz Farbar and Mickey Knox as a trio of gangsters holed up in a ramshackle New York apartment, drinking, braying, and fighting.