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Bukowski Born Into This

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Mon 5 July 2004 // 21:00
Tue 6 July 2004 // 21:00 *
Wed 7 July 2004 // 19:00
Thu 8 July 2004 // 19:00

BUKOWSKI: BORN INTO THIS
(John Dullaghan / USA / 2003 / Beta-SP / cert tba)
(Mon 5th - Tues 6th 9pm / Wed 7th-Thur 8th 7pm / £4/3/2ttt)

This acclaimed new documentary is the first comprehensive feature about cult writer Charles Bukowski (1920-1994); and while longtime fans will find confirmation of the Bukowski they'd always imagined, there are plenty of surprises in store. The film traces his extraordinary life, from an abusive childhood through decades of poverty and alcoholism; numerous menial jobs and turbulent relationships; and his eventual international celebrity as a poet, novelist and underground cult icon. In his lifetime, Bukowski became most widely known as the screenwriter and real-life model for BARFLY, the film based on his early life.

Dullaghan spent seven years researching Born Into This, conducting dozens of interviews with relatives, neighbors, teenage pals, fellow post office workers, girlfriends and other poets as well as better-known friends (including Sean Penn, Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Waits). The director goes to great lengths to present the different sides of the author, offering the most revealing look yet of Bukowski and his work. The result is a film that peels off the hardened mask of the mythic Bukowski to reveal the insecure, loving and extremely human man--and the artist --underneath.