The prestigious MoMA Fortnight documentary series opened with Nova ’78, a performance film from Howard Brookner’s footage of the Nova Convention, a three-day arts celebration at the Intermedia Theater on Second Avenue, the downtown event of the year 1978. At center was William S. Burroughs.

The Nova evening at MoMA was for many of us a nostalgic romp through a vital time in yesteryear: The brainchild of Sylvere Lottringer, founder of Semiotexte, and James Grauerholz, Burroughs’ homme d’affaires after he relocated from London to New York, The Nova Convention celebrated art. Burroughs had just published a book, The Third Mind, a collaboration with artist, writer, restaurateur, raconteur, Brion Gysin, with whom Burroughs had a longtime friendship. The book, a cause celebre in France was an instruction manual for creating cut-ups and fold-ins, a useful collage method for literary arts –and, in the hands of David Bowie and others, rock lyrics. Gysin discovered the technique when he and Burroughs lived in Paris’ “Beat Hotel” in the ‘60’s. 

A who’s who of downtown artists, The Nova Convention featured poets Anne Waldman and John Giorno, Patti Smith performing, and Frank Zappa doing his utmost on the “Talking Asshole” section of William S. Burroughs’ classic Naked Lunch. Zappa was a stand-in for Keith Richards—not too shabby.

Howard Brookner’s documentation remained lost for decades until his nephew Aaron Brookner found this footage. Becoming a filmmaker in his own right, he restored his uncle’s brilliant Burroughs biopic, and shaped these performances into the doc. Before Aaron’s excellent work, who even knew this existed?

Just a few weeks before, the Burroughs fellowship gathered at the Bunker on the Bowery, a windowless loft in a former YMCA where Burroughs lived when he returned to the States in the mid-‘70’s; everyone met James in the Bunker, so it was a fitting site for a memorial remembering James Grauerholz who had died on New Year’s Day. Patti Smith wore a plaid shirt in his honor and sang. Speakers included John Waters, Anne Waldman, Stu Meyers and Ira Silverberg. A Buddhist ceremony sent Grauerholz to the Bardo. And others, Steve Buscemi, Oren Moverman, Victor Bockris, Lee Ann Brown stayed on to remember their time in heady Bunker glory days.