"A cinematic time capsule... where icons such as Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, and Laurie Anderson met in an explosive artistic clash." – CPH:DOX
"The mission and ambition were to stretch the limits of the possible." – Diego Batlle, Otros Cines
Wednesday, September 23, 8:00 p.m. | The Chicago Underground Film Festival is proud to present NOVA '78 as the Opening Night Film of its 33rd edition.
Drawn from the long-lost archive of filmmaker Howard Brookner and painstakingly restored over more than a decade, NOVA '78 resurrects one of the defining moments in underground cultural history: the legendary 1978 Nova Convention, where literature, music, performance, film, and radical thought collided around the singular gravitational force of William S. Burroughs. A signal from 1978 breaks through the static. For three extraordinary days in New York's East Village, the Nova Convention became a temporary autonomous zone where ideas, images, and sound spilled across disciplines. Burroughs stands at the center of the transmission as language folds in on itself and time slips.
Patti Smith chants. Laurie Anderson bends signal into story. Frank Zappa reads Naked Lunch. Philip Glass conjures hypnotic loops. Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Timothy Leary, Terry Southern, Ed Sanders, Brion Gysin, and countless fellow travelers converge in a gathering unlike any before or since—a fleeting moment when Beats, punks, experimental musicians, poets, filmmakers, and conceptual artists briefly occupied the same creative frequency. More than a concert film or historical document, NOVA '78 captures underground culture inventing itself in real time. Performances dissolve into conversations, rehearsals into spontaneous encounters, while Howard Brookner's camera drifts effortlessly between stage, backstage, audience, and the streets of downtown Manhattan, preserving a creative ecosystem before it was institutionalized, commodified, or mythologized.
Rather than explaining or canonizing the event, Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias embrace Burroughs' own cut-up logic, allowing fragments, performances, conversations, and chance encounters to accumulate into something stranger and more alive than conventional documentary. What emerges is neither nostalgia nor museum piece, but a living archive of artistic risk, collective experimentation, and radical possibility.
Nearly half a century later, NOVA '78 feels less like an archival discovery than a message waiting for the present to receive it. The signal is still live.
Awards & Nominations
Official Selection, Locarno Film Festival
Opening Film, MoMA Doc Fortnight
Official Selection, CPH:DOX
Competition, Doclisboa
Official Selection, Cinema du Réel
Official Selection, Viennale
Official Selection, BAFICI.
Chicago Underground Film Festival Select Screenings | September 23–27, 2026
As the longest-running underground film festival in the world, CUFF continues to be one of the most innovative and accessible platforms for those interested in making, experiencing, and discussing underground art. Curated by CUFF. Film synopses provided by CUFF unless otherwise noted. Learn more and get tickets at cuff.org
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu