ELMS LESTERS CELEBRATES CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Exhibition Info

In August 1996 Elms Lesters Painting Rooms staged the first ever multi-media exhibition celebrating the life and work of American realist writer CHARLES BUKOWSKI.

The two week exhibition, conceived and curated by Paul Jones of the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, included a series of previously unpublished photographs of Bukowski by Joan Gannij, digitally enhanced IRIS prints by Michael Montfort and Giorgio Moroder and family photographs selected by Bukowski’s widow Linda Lee Bukowski.

Playing throughout the exhibition were selected videos and documentaries, and audio tapes of Bukowski at readings.

On display were personal objects and clothing generously loaned by Linda Lee Bukowski. To celebrate Bukowski’s birthday on 16th August there were public performances of two of his short stories “Love for $17.50” and “Loneliness” with music by Don Preston and directed by actor / writer Clive Saunders of the Blue Bus Company.

A very limited number of the highly collectable catalogue are still available from our online store

VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES AND FILMS SCREENED DURING THE EXHIBITION INCLUDED:

• THE BUKOWSKI TAPES by Barbet Schroeder
  (A four hour long collection of 52 short-interviews shot in 1987)

• CHARLES BUKOWSKI – EAST HOLLYWOOD by Thomas Schmitt
  (First documentary about Bukowski in Europe by German Television in 1976. Shot by Thomas Schmitt with his grlfreind Alexandra v. Gaewe with the first available amateur video equipment)

• IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK – BUKOWSKI IN HAMBURG by Thomas Schmitt
  (Documentary about Bukowski’s only reading in Germany in 1978)

• I’M STILL HERE by Thomas Schmitt
  Broadcast in 1990 by the West German Television WDR on the occasion of Bukowski’s 70th birthday

• BUKOWSKI by Taylor Hackford
  (Documentary made for KCET 1973)

• BUKOWSKI by Mette Fugl
  (Danish interview circa 1990)

• CRAZY LOVE by Dominic Derruderre
  (1987 feature film based on “LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL”

• BUKOWSKI AT BELLEVUE
  (1970 amateur footage of an early Bukowski reading at Bellevue Community College, Washington State)

“Part of the pleasure for me in watching “Bukowski At Bellevue” is seeing the students in the audience and recalling what it felt like when I first discovered Bukowski in my mid-teens. His words hit my frontal lobes like a syntactical blackjack, slapping me out of my suburban stupor and propelling me into the life of a poet and provocateur. For that, he will always be my hero..”