Energy and How to Get It. 1981. USA. Directed by Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer, Gary Hill. With Robert Golka, Agnes Moon, William S. Burroughs, Robert Downey, Wurlitzer, John Giorno, Lynne Adams, Alan Moyle, Dr. John, Libby Titus. 4K digital restoration of the original version by The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. 28 min.
One of Robert Frank’s most enjoyable films—Errol Morris must have taken a page out of his documentary-hybrid playbook for Fast, Cheap and Out of Control—Energy is the portrait of an American outlaw, the inventor Robert “Lightning Bob” Golka, who’s incandescently convinced he can save the world if left to his own devices (literally, his own devices: out of an airplane hangar strewn with rusted car chassis, gear cranks, and giant Tesla coils, Golka tries to harness the power of the Sun). Meanwhile, energy czars (William Burroughs) and debt collectors, sheriffs and fast-talking Hollywood types (Robert Downey) do everything they can to bring him down. Dr. John and Libby Titus are the Greek chorus.
Project Tesla. 1980. USA. Directed by Robert Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer, Gary Hill. 16mm. 10 min.
This rarely screened film was used to raise funds for the making of Energy and How to Get It. High-energy physicist Robert Golka was granted a lease on an airplane hangar once used to build B-29 bombers to further his experiments on ball lightning and free energy distribution. By the time Robert Frank and his crew arrived, Golka, his frisky older love interest Agnes Moon, and his dogs Nitro and Proton were facing eviction.
About Us. 1972. USA. Directed by Robert Frank. 16mm courtesy Visual Studies Workshop. 38 min.
Robert Frank collaborated on this improvisational, observational film with six students at the Visual Studies Workshop, an alternative art school in Rochester, New York.
Untitled 1971. 1971. USA. Directed by Robert Frank. DCP. Courtesy of Reed College and Matthew Kangas. Silent. 13 min.
Billboards and American flags and pinball machines, empty corridors and bustling classrooms, the clowning faces of the students at Reed College—Robert Frank shot and edited this quickfire succession of images during a visit to the Portland, Oregon, campus in 1971.
Program approx. 89 min.