Even though his musical and literary oeuvre is neither large nor very well known apart from his bestseller-novel «The Sheltering Sky», the American composer and author Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was a man of immense charisma and influence. When he moved to Tangier (Morocco) in 1949, it was a city divided into zones, a sanctuary for artists, writers and the wealthy to do as they pleased without fear of prosecution. Soon, Paul‘s friends and peers from America began visiting: Tennessee Williams,Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and many others. The Neo-Lost Generation, the Beats, the Hippies all searched him out, lured by the mysterious and magical world he depicted in his books. But that was only one side. Though Paul Bowles never hid his homosexuality, he was married to the lesbian writer Jane Bowles. What attracted them despite their extremely different personalities was a shared worldview: that one must travel to the point of no return in order to find salvation. Based on an exclusive series of interviews with Bowles shortly before his death and anecdotes provided by his friends and collaborators, the film tells of a daring and visionary life and a relationship shaped by a codependency that went way beyond sexuality. Among the participants are Gore Vidal, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Waters, Ruth Fainlight, Edmund White, William Burroughs, Francis Bacon and many others.  

Visual Poem 3 Mostra de Vídeo Independent de Barcelona 1996.

"A collaboration with writer Lucy Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport to the city center, we found ourselves amazed by the landscape outside of the car windows; a massive construction project under way in all directions. While not in itself unusual, we were by struck dumb by the epic scale and seemingly incomprehensible plan of the development and were drawn to return together to this puzzling zone".

Under the benevolent shadow of Jean Genet, buried in Morocco,  this film is a dialogue between the living and the dead, an invitation to bring those realms together, between silent humanist revolt and poetic elegy. A family takes loving care of a white tomb, in a cemetery with a view of the sea. We are in Larache, south of Tangier, where Jean Genet lived the last ten years of his life.  Today, the writer is finally home, among his own. And for the locals of the city, he is a legend.Few of them actually knew him. Still fewer have read him. Most all have reinvented him for themselves. Everyone has their own story to tell. But they all agree on onething: “Jon Joney” valued them. He was on their side. Thesesimple, poor, quite frankly invisible individuals form the voiceless and futureless people of Morocco. Living incarnations of the characters in hiswork, they now keep watch over his grave.