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About the Project
The Beat Hotel, a feature length documentary directed by Alan Govenar, goes deep into the legacy of the American Beats in Paris during the heady years between 1957 and 1963, when Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso fled the obscenity trials in the United States surrounding the publication of Ginsbergs poem Howl. They took refuge in a cheap no-name hotel they had heard about at 9, Rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, Brion Gysin, and others from England and elsewhere in Europe, seeking out the freedom that the Latin Quarter of Paris might provide.
The Beat Hotel, as it came to be called, was a sanctuary of creativity, but was also, as British photographer Harold Chapman recalls, an entire community of complete oddballs, bizarre, strange people, poets, writers, artists, musicians, pimps, prostitutes, policemen, and everybody you could imagine. And in this environment, Burroughs finished his controversial book Naked Lunch; Ian Somerville and Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine; Corso wrote some of his greatest poems; and Harold Norse, in his own cut-up experiments, wrote the novella, aptly called The Beat Hotel.
The film tracks down Harold Chapman in the small seaside town of Deal in Kent England. Chapmans photographs are iconic of a time and place when Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Corso, Burroughs, Gysin, Somerville and Norse were just beginning to establish themselves on the international scene. Chapman lived in the attic of the hotel, and according to Ginsberg didnt say a word for two years because he wanted to be invisible and to document the scene as it actually happened.
In the film, Chapmans photographs and stylized dramatic recreations of his stories meld with the recollections of Elliot Rudie, a Scottish artist, whose drawings of his time in the hotel offer a poignant and sometimes humorous counterpoint. The memories of Chapman and Rudie interweave with the insights of French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, author Barry Miles, Danish filmmaker Lars Movin, and the first hand accounts of Oliver Harris, Regina Weinrich, Patrick Amie, Eddie Woods, and 95 year old George Whitman, among others, to evoke a portrait of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and the oddities of the Beat Hotel that is at once unexpected and revealing.
What the funds are for
Weve been working on this project over the course of the last three years. Documentary Arts received a grant from the Florence Gould Foundation, but the scope of the film has expanded, and we have been using our limited organizational funds to keep the production moving forward. The Beat Hotel is a work of passion.
Were now in the post-production phase and we are struggling to raise enough funds to get the film finished and ready for distribution.
All contributions will go to Documentary Arts, and are tax-deductible.
The Rewards
Who we are
Alan Govenar (Director)
Alan Govenar is a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker. He is president of Documentary Arts. Govenar has a B.A. with distinction in American Folklore from Ohio State University, an M.A. in Folklore and Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, Stompin at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller, Extraordinary Ordinary People: Five American Masters of Traditional Arts, Untold Glory: African Americans in Pursuit of Freedom, Opportunity and Achievement, Stoney Knows How: Life as a Sideshow Tattoo Artist, Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged, Portraits of Community, and The Early Years of Rhythm and Blues. His book Osceola: Memories of a Sharecroppers Daughter won First Place in the New York Book Festival (Childrens Non-Fiction), a Boston Globe-Hornbook Honor; and an Orbis Pictus Honor from the National Council of Teachers of English. The off-Broadway premiere of his musical Blind Lemon Blues (website), co-created with Akin Babatunde received rave reviews in The New York Times and Variety.
Govenars film, Stoney Knows How, based on his book by the same title about Old School tattoo artist Leonard St. Clair, was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and was selected as an Outstanding Film of the Year by the London Film Festival. Govenar has also produced and directed numerous films in association with NOVA, La Sept/ARTE, and the corporation for public broadcasting for broadcast and educational distribution, including The Voyage of Doom, Le Naufrage de la Belle, The Devils Swing, Texas Style, Everything But the Squeak, The Human Volcano, The Hard Ride, Dreams of Conquest, and Little Willie Eason and His Talking Gospel Guitar.
Alan Hatchett (Editor)
Alan Hatchett has worked with Documentary Arts since 2003 as associate producer, technical director, editor and multimedia artist. Most recently he edited the feature film Master Qi and the Monkey King and the video content for the exhibition Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan at the International Center for Photography in New York.
Harold Chapman (Photographer, Beat Hotel resident)
Harold Chapman moved to Paris in 1956 at the age of 29 and lived in a thirteenth-class hotel on the Left Bank, which became known as the Beat Hotel. Its owner, Madame Rachou, fiercely protected her brood of artists. It was there that Harold Chapman met and photographed William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin and a host of other people who were to become prominent in the world, particularly in the arts and publishing.
Harold Chapman spent seven years in the hotel, during which he worked ceaselessly to produce a documentation of Paris everyday street life. The Beat Hotel was a major turning-point in Harold Chapmans career. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Harold Chapman photographed street fashion on the Kings Road, London, for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In the 1970s and early 80s, he worked in Britain doing picture research and produced several books. In 1984, The Beat Hotel was published by Montpellier/Geneva based publisher, gris banal. Valued at $400-600 in the Allen Ginsberg and Friends Auction in Sothebys New York in 1999, a copy of this book sold for $2,250. It was also described in a Sothebys Olympia 2 catalogue (Inspirational Times) in 2003 as a cult work.
In 1998, Harold Chapmans work appeared in the thirtieth anniversary issue of Creative Camera, a leading British photographic magazine, to which he had contributed thirty years previously in the first issue. Interviewed in December 1968, Chapman declared: there is no need for the contrived shot. Pictures are everywhere. So why set up a photograph when the natural one is infinitely better? He added: I am photographing for the future, not for the present All I aim for is to record the trivial things that ordinary people use and consider unimportant.
From the early 2000s to the present day, Harold Chapman documents his locality, makes slide shows and is working on future exhibitions.
Elliot Rudie (Artist, Beat Hotel resident)
Documentary Arts (Producer)
Team on This Campaign:
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Documentary ArtsProducer
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Alan GovenarDirector
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Alan HatchettEditor