Charles Bukowski

Downtrodden writer Henry and distressed goddess Wanda aren't exactly husband and wife: they're wedded to their bar stools. But, they like each other's company—and Barfly captures their giddy, gin-soaked attempts to make a go of life on the skids.

In May 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing became President of the Republic and wanted to bring about a new era of modernity. One of his first decisions was to break up the ORTF with the creation of three new television channels: TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3. Three new public channels but autonomous and competing. It is a race for the audience which is engaged then, and from now on the channels will make the war! This competition will give birth to a real golden age for television programs, with variety shows in the forefront. The stars of the song are going to invade the living rooms of the French for their biggest pleasure. This unedited documentary tells the story of the metamorphosis of this television of the early 1970s, between freedom of tone, scandals, political intrigues and programs that have become mythical.

Based upon Vincenzoni's biography, "Pane e cinema", the documentary traces the story of the screen play writer who invented many stories that became blockbusters throughout the world.

1973, San Francisco. Charles Bukowski, underground poet and punk ahead of his time, reads his poem Love to a wild audience who've come to see the pulp writer's provocative performance. But that day, instead of a punk they find a broken man hungry for love.

Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." A 7 day vlog during the summer of 2023, a story of dreamers and drowners.

More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours.

A man named Clint enters a solar-powered van called Vandora into a competition called Freakout.

The Charles Bukowski Tapes are an altogether more than four hours long collection of 52 short-interviews with the American cult author Charles Bukowski, sorted by topic and each between one and ten minutes long. Director Barbet Schroeder (Barfly) interviews Bukowski about such themes as alcohol, violence, and women, and Bukowski answers willingly, losing himself in sometimes minute-long monologues. Amongst other things, Bukowski leads the small camera team through his parents’ house and his former neighbourhood, but the largest part of the interviews takes place in Bukowski’s flat or backyard. The documentary includes a scene in which Bukowski reacts violently toward his wife Linda Lee.

One afternoon, Bukowski sat down to record the audio version of his classic, Run With the Hunted. The session took place in his home with his wife by his side. These are the outtakes.

Charles Bukowski is filmed going to a poetry reading in San Francisco.

Documentary about Charles Bukowski's visit to Germany and his reading in Hamburg.

This is the last poetry reading Charles Bukowski gave outside the US. It was video taped in 1979 by local promoter Dennis Del Torre.

The Last Straw is a film documenting the very last live poetry reading given by Charles Bukowski at The Sweetwater, a music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife".Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."

BBC documentary on the brutally honest writer/poet Charles Bukowski.

A long night spent drinking, smoking, and talking about sex, literature, childhood and humanity with irreverent writer poet Charles Bukowski in his California home in 1981. A story of video tapes lost, then found, and brought back to life.

In the spring of 1970 Charles Bukowski took his first plane trip for a poetry reading at Bellevue Community College in Washington state. That he was videotaped by two students apparently was later forgotten, but the tapes were recently rediscovered and have been released by Black Sparrow press. "Bukowski at Bellevue" gives us a fascinating glimpse of the man before he had to be concerned with how celebrity and financial security were affecting him. (It is said that this was only his fourth public reading.) This is Bukowski, then about 50, taken straight. No games, no irony, no self-consciousness--just an ordinary-looking guy, maybe hung over, sitting before a small group of students reading his work with gusto, humor and sensitivity. A man who clearly had lived the marginal life he wrote about with passion and at times a lyrical, even mystical beauty.

America Undercover goes to the Madison Hotel in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles and talks to some of the desperate people living there. It talks to a prostitute and heroin addict named Becky, a drug dealer and traveler names John, and an heavy drinking alcoholic named Jack Woodrow Wilson.

In this Bukowski poem entitled, "The Shoelace Poem," Bukowski invites the listener/reader to feel less alone in the insanity created by the simple, mundane string of ordinary life events. Sometimes it isn’t massive life tragedies that push someone over the edge. Sometimes it's just one too many broken shoelaces. And we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt, assuming we have likely all broken that last shoelace.

Downtrodden writer Henry and distressed goddess Wanda aren't exactly husband and wife: they're wedded to their bar stools. But, they like each other's company—and Barfly captures their giddy, gin-soaked attempts to make a go of life on the skids.

Poet/lecturer Charles Serking awakens from his alcoholic haze long enough to take a bus back to L.A. and plunge into an orgy of drink and sexual depravity.

Simon and Dede are best friends: two aimless drunks who spend their days getting sloshed and any other available time getting laid. Simon is living on unemployment benefits in a trailer parked near his sister's apartment. Dede works at a fish-packing plant on the night shift. Neither man is sensitive, young, or good looking. However, their sang-froid (literally, "cold blood," referring to a quality of imperturbability) stands them in good stead as they go about their seedy lives, picking up one woman and having sex with her on the beach, or when Simon calmly has sex with a prostitute in front of the woman's brother. In the past, a bizarre necrophiliac situation led to Simon experiencing his only sense of what it might be to truly love someone.

A short film based on the poem by Charles Bukowski.

A boozy writer hammers away on his Underwood, recalling a childhood in which his abusive father kicked him out of the house for writing short stories. Based on the poem by Charles Bukowski.

From a Charles Bukowski poem

Death follows a poet for his whole life, being a parasite to the poet.

While sitting on a fire escape eating eggs, a drunkard watches a human body fall past him impacting on the sidewalk below. He runs to tell his girlfriend only to find that she does not believe his tale.

Plot is about a man who’s been in his apartment ever since his wife left him. Evening after evening he’s getting drunk and calls a hot line girl called Kiki... Srdjan Dragojevic's student film.

It’s not always easy when you are a kid. Bullying, cussing, growing up. It’s all a part of life. Adaptation of the Charles Bukowski story.

An unseen narrator reads Bukowski's poem over footage of traffic, shopping and nature.

In the spring of 1970 Charles Bukowski took his first plane trip for a poetry reading at Bellevue Community College in Washington state. That he was videotaped by two students apparently was later forgotten, but the tapes were recently rediscovered and have been released by Black Sparrow press. "Bukowski at Bellevue" gives us a fascinating glimpse of the man before he had to be concerned with how celebrity and financial security were affecting him. (It is said that this was only his fourth public reading.) This is Bukowski, then about 50, taken straight. No games, no irony, no self-consciousness--just an ordinary-looking guy, maybe hung over, sitting before a small group of students reading his work with gusto, humor and sensitivity. A man who clearly had lived the marginal life he wrote about with passion and at times a lyrical, even mystical beauty.