Reviews

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  ★★★★ review by nichy6 on Letterboxd

  There is nothing sadder than to live a life vicariously... except perhaps to make a movie vicariously.

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  ★★★½ review by Michael Scott on Letterboxd

  My family was never one for home movies. I don't recall us even owning a video camera, though they were pretty common at the time. I think I'd be a little spun out to be able to connect with my youth in that way. If Aaron Brookner's experience in Uncle Howard is anything to go by, I'm spot on in my assessment. 

  To arrive at that (rather odd) comparison takes a few adjustments. For one, my family didn't leave behind a significant film covering an American cultural icon, in Aaron's particular case, his uncle, Howard Brookner garnered critical acclaim for his documentary Burroughs: The Movie, the making of which brought him into contact with the creme de la creme of independent film making in the 1980s (John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, Sara Driver) and cultural heavyweights of the decades prior (Ginsberg, Warhol and of course Burroughs).

  Uncle Howard takes that "how cool is this" fandom as its giddy starting point, as Aaron sets out to recover the archived footage from his uncle's famous work to prepare it for restoration, and it will be a fascinating watch for fans of Burroughs: The Movie, Burroughs the man, or film making in that era. 

  But Uncle Howard's real emotional power comes when it veers from Aaron's original intentions, which it does with surprising fluidity once Aaron realises, surprisingly, that Burrough's isn't the most interesting person in his film.

  The resulting documentary reaps the rewards of the startling intimacy between the film maker and his subject just as it suffers some of its pitfalls, especially as in its closing sections. Most will forgive the indulgence though, especially in the light of the Aaron's illuminating revitalisation of his uncle's reputation.

  A touching reverie on what the HIV/Aids epidemic snatched from us creatively and personally.

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  ★★★★ review by ristubasan on Letterboxd

  Unexpectedly moving - not because of the remarkable footage from the 1980s New York scene, but almost in spite of it. And yet that footage, which if I'm honest is what led me to this, makes for rich viewing, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

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  ★★★★★ review by miranda 🔮💣 on Letterboxd

  Just like Robert Mapplethorpe, I’m constantly devastated by the tremendous talents and lives lost prematurely to AIDS. This is an extremely touching and loving portrait of a lost genius

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  ★★★★ review by manousos on Letterboxd

  Uncle Howard is a documentary made by Aaron Brookner mostly from odds and ends of unused film footage left behind by his uncle, a young filmmaker named Howard Brookner, with some contemporary footage of the people from his 2 documentaries he made in the early 80s (William Burroughs and Robert Wilson) and the one drama he directed though he died before it opened (Bloodhounds of Broadway) from complications with AIDS. Brookner, through his association with Burroughs ran around from the late 70s to the late 80s within a culture of beat poets, and underground writers and artists. His boyfriend for ten years was the male model turned novelist, Brad Gooch, who stayed by him to the bitter end. His nephew, Aaron, who was quite young when he died, nonetheless adored him to the point that he ended up going to NYU film school himself and this film is the result of that arc of his life. It's a very sad and mournful film but you get interviews with people like Jim Jarmusch and even see him as a young man doing sound for Brookner's documentaries with that shock of hair except it's black and not the characteristic white we're used to seeing. It's a multilevel narrative that bounces back and forth between Brookner's early New York film school days and the present which shows Aaron having some trouble acquiring the footage from storage facilities and John Giorno's bunker space in the Bowery. The interviews with Brookner's parents in the present reveals that they were stricken when he announced to them that he was gay, showing that this minority has a long way to go before their presence is taken for granted. And for those people in the 70s who had to get used to such an identity showing up among their families to see so many of them fall to the scourge of AIDS must have seemed like the trumpet of a prophecy come true -- but a fascinating and disturbingly mournful film nonetheless. It takes a little while for the pall and fascination of the film to seep into you but once it does you can't stop it any more than you can stop yourself from looking at a car accident that's been beautifully staged.

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