NOVA '78

An extraordinary moment of 1970s American counterculture, shot on 16mm and unseen until today.

In New York in 1978, the Nova Convention brought together a constellation of artists around writer William S. Burroughs: Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman and Philip Glass. Long thought lost, this footage was rediscovered and restored between 2012 and 2024, capturing an explosion of ideas and forms where poetry, music, performance and cinema collide. But Nova ’78 does more than bring a legendary event back to life. Beneath the artistic ferment, the fractures of an era emerge: political fears, threats of repression and the struggles already running through American society.