Join us for a special screening of the 2025 documentary Nova ’78, that chronicles the 1978 Nova Convention centered on William S. Burroughs and New York’s downtown avant-garde. After the screening, artist Julia Heyward performs her electronic-vocal monologue from the now-legendary event. Heyward then joins director Aaron Brookner for a Q&A about the convention, the recovered archive, and bringing Nova ’78 to the screen.
About the Film
Created from 44 rolls of recovered and newly discovered film footage shot by filmmaker Howard Brookner, Nova ’78 plunges viewers into the legendary Nova Convention, a three-day gathering celebrating countercultural talisman William S. Burroughs. Organized by Sylvère Lotringer, James Grauerholz, and John Giorno, the 1978 convention gave form to something already in the air in downtown New York: the sense that the Beats’ anti-establishment experiments with language, performance, and media were a consequential inheritance of a younger avant-garde, including the emerging No Wave scene, who were confronting many of the same anxieties about humanity’s capacity for self-destruction.
That lineage comes vividly into view as Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg take the convention stage alongside Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Anne Waldman and others, capturing a moment when Beat culture, experimental performance, minimalist music, punk and No Wave were all brushing against one another.
Nova ’78 also preserves the atmosphere of its tense era. Political upheaval, threats to civil liberties, environmental anxiety, and the specter of nuclear catastrophe surface throughout the film, giving urgency to the artists’ experiments with language, technology, performance, and mass media. Burroughs’s longstanding fascination with systems of communication and control resonates sharply with this unsettled late-1970s landscape, as a younger generation searches for new forms through which to respond.The film also features previously unseen footage of William S. Burroughs, filmed by Howard Brookner with a young Jim Jarmusch working as sound recordist, including material from a journey to Colorado.
Rather than explain that moment from a distance, directors Rodrigo Areias and Aaron Brookner—Howard Brookner’s nephew and steward of his archive—let the recovered footage unfold on its own terms, through shots of performances, conversations, audiences, and unexpected encounters. The result is a vivid portrait of an artistic community in motion, aware of its predecessors while already becoming a reference point for what came next.
About the Performance
For this special Getty presentation, artist Julia Heyward appears in person to perform her celebrated harmonizer-modified vocal monologue Keep Moving Buddy, debuted at the Nova Convention as part of a tuxedo-clad double act with Laurie Anderson. Heyward then joins director Aaron Brookner for a conversation.
Presented as part of Ever Present and in dialogue with the October 4 program A Moveable Feats of No: No Wave Women with Adele Bertei, this event extends the series’ exploration of the histories, affinities, and artistic lineages surrounding No Wave.
