William S. Burroughs

A documentary directed by Jean-François Vallee.

Synopsis

Like most vision­ar­ies, William Bur­roughs takes his inner war out­side the walls, to fight against the evil spir­its of power and con­trol that roam the human race. How do these “alien spirit” get us to want always more, bet­ter, newer, dis­re­gard­ing the consequences?

For W Bur­roughs, it’simple: we are the junky and the pusher, locked in a deadly embrace of desire. With his unique expe­ri­ence, Prof. Bur­roughs teaches us ” the alge­bra of need”, tena­ciously, while his fero­cious alter ego William Seward blast us with sen­sory over­load, sul­fu­ric humor, to kill our lar­val defenses and destroy the con­tols, the rack­ets, the “Nova Mob” that enslave us : a les­son paid for in blood.

Bor­row­ing the author’s tele­scop­ing imagery, the film attempt to fol­low his trips, real and imag­i­nary, pauses a lit­tle to tell the story, and goes on to the next stage of Bur­roughs’ “voy­age in inner space”, where he mixes and cuts his way toward space, out of the slav­ery of time, to free­dom and death.