Chappaqua

The title takes its name from a burial site, used by an Indian tribe from the north of New-York. Initiated after the death of the producer’s father and financed with his own money, this independent movie looks again at the author’s autobiographic experience that is also evoked in one of the author’s poems. The main character, Russell Harwick, acts out the story of the des-intoxication cure that Conrad Rooks undertook in 1962 in a Parisian clinic. It was here that he met up with William Burroughs, an encounter that was not going to facilitate his healing. The movie combines flamboyant perceptive hallucinations generated by hard drugs together with grim reality. The sensorial pictures created by Robert Frank, director of photography, are accompanied by the music of Ravi Shankar. Reflecting an ambivalent relationship with the counter-culture, this movie was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966.