Robert Frank

An independent filmmaker, in the USA from 1947, Frank was a magazine photographer before publishing "The Americans," a collection of his own work, in 1958. The next year he made his best-known excursion into cinema with "Pull My Daisy," a short, free adaptation of a portion of Jack Kerouac's play "The Beat Generation." He was subsequently labeled a member of the American "underground," though this applies more to the availability of his films than to their form or content. "Me and My Brother" (1969) is a sensitive, semi-documentary study of catatonic schizophrenia and "Candy Mountain" (1986; co-directed with Rudy Wurlitzer) is an intriguing tale of a down-and-out rocker who traverses North America in search of an elusive guitar maker.