DIRECTOR: Aaron Brookner
PRODUCER: Paula Vaccaro
EDITOR: Masahiro Hirakubo
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Gregg de Domenico, Andre Dobert

Uncle Howard is an intertwining tale of past and present. It is the story of filmmaker Howard Brookner—whose work captured the late 70’s and early 80’s Cultural Revolution—and his nephew Aaron’s personal journey 25 years later to discover his uncle’s films and the legacy of a life cut short by the plague of AIDS. Howard Brookner was buried on his 35th birthday in 1989. He was gay, an Ivy League graduate, broke artist, rising Hollywood star, heroin user, director of cult docs, and an honest and inspirational uncle. He also was a close friend of William S. Burroughs and other counter-culture figures and made a documentary of Burroughs in 1983 (Burroughs: The Movie) that became a cult classic.

Aaron Brookner began his film career working on Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity. He wrote an authorized screenplay based upon the life of legendary writer Budd Schulberg. In 2011 he initiated a project to restore his uncle Howard’s films and archive material. While visiting Burrough’s New York City bunker, Aaron uncovered more than 300 canisters of film and other memorabilia, including outtakes of Burroughs that led to the successful recovery and restoration of the classic film. Howard’s video diaries helped Aaron piece together his uncle’s Rashomon-like existence.