Some of my earliest memories involve visiting my uncle, Howard Brookner, at Robert Wilson’s luminous loft overlooking New York’s West Side Highway, where Howard lived while Bob worked abroad. That expansive space, with its huge windows and fire escape from which we watched 4th of July fireworks explode over the Hudson River, left an indelible mark on me. Years later, Howard’s film, Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS, viewed through a hazy, dubbed VHS tape, helped me make sense of the importance of Bob’s work and their shared journey. Howard’s rarely seen second documentary captures Wilson’s visionary quest to unify six international theater productions into a monumental global opera for the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles. The film immerses us in Wilson’s creative universe and the result is an incandescent portrait of artistic genius, revealing Bob’s ambitious vision and the delicate realities behind creative dreams. After Howard’s untimely death from AIDS in 1989, his films nearly disappeared entirely. In 2011, I began searching, first locating his 1983 documentary on William S. Burroughs (re-released by Criterion Collection in 2014) and then turning my attention in 2012 to Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS. Howard’s late co-producer, Orin Wechsberg, told me that all original materials were lost to Hurricane Sandy, with only one VHS tape left. I followed leads to labs and archives in New York, London and finally Hamburg, where I learned Howard’s original negatives had been discarded. Driven by strong compulsion, we reconstructed the sound mix from scattered magnetic tapes and VHS copies collected along the way. After a decade of work with dedicated specialists in sound, scanning, color correction and restoration across New York, Portugal and London, we revived the film from a challenging surviving print. Today, Howard’s restored documentary stands as a testament to the perseverance, artistic vision, and enduring legacy of Wilson’s monumental dreams and Howard’s vital cinematic voice. It is an honor to share it with new audiences and see it live again.

Aaron Brookner