The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
Howard Brookner
At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026
Country
United States
Language
English
Running Time
90
minutes
Year of Release
1987
About The Film
Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS would have been the great theater artist's magnum opus: a twelve-hour historical opera in six distinct parts, each rehearsed in a different country — Germany, France, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States — for a unified performance at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The work, formally titled The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down, encompassed the American Civil War, the life and death of Frederick the Great, and the unification of Italy, drawing on imagery from L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne, and Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, with music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, and Gavin Bryars.
Filmmaker Howard Brookner — a close friend of Wilson's — followed the director across six countries as he worked to bring this impossibly ambitious project to completion, documenting the dizzying complexity of coordinating multiple international theater companies, the relentless funding difficulties, the strikes by Italian theater unions, and the sheer physical and logistical exhaustion of the undertaking. The film traces not only the practical mechanics of creating an epic on this scale but also the history of Wilson's visual and theatrical approach more broadly, examining how his precisely painted stage images — drawing more from the traditions of visual art than from orthodox literary theater — are created and how they communicate meaning without relying on conventional language or psychology.
The project ultimately collapsed: funding fell through, and the complete work was never performed. Brookner's film remains the definitive portrait of one of the great unrealized artistic visions of the 20th century. The original film materials were long unseen after being damaged in Hurricane Sandy in 2012; a twelve-year restoration by Aaron Brookner (Howard's nephew) premiered at the New York Film Festival in September 2025. A Janus Films release, restored in 2025 by Pinball London, Janus Films, and The Criterion Collection.
Director: Howard Brookner
Restoration supervised by Aaron Brookner, Paula Vaccaro, and Carlos Morales/EPost
A Janus Films release
Restored by Pinball London – Janus Films – The Criterion Collection
About The Artist(s)
Howard Brookner (April 30, 1954 – April 27, 1989) was an American filmmaker whose short career produced three distinctive and celebrated documentary and narrative features. Born in New York City and raised in Great Neck, Long Island, he studied at Phillips Exeter Academy before earning a B.A. in political science from Columbia University and an M.A. in art history and film from New York University.
At NYU, Brookner began his debut film as his senior thesis, assembling a crew that included classmates Tom DiCillo (camera) and Jim Jarmusch (sound). The resulting feature, Burroughs (1983), offered an unprecedented intimate portrait of writer William S. Burroughs and premiered at the New York Film Festival, later airing on BBC Arena. The film established Brookner as a documentarian with a gift for gaining genuine access to complex artistic figures.
His second major documentary, Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars, followed the avant-garde theater director across six countries as Wilson struggled to mount his unrealized magnum opus for the 1984 Summer Olympics. Shot on 16mm in Minneapolis, Rome, Rotterdam, Cologne, Tokyo, and Marseille, the film features interviews with Philip Glass, Heiner Müller, Lucinda Childs, David Byrne, and others. It screened at avant-garde and cinema festivals and aired on public television in the US, on the BBC in the UK, and on ZDF in Germany. Several of the film's original elements were lost to Hurricane Sandy in 2012; a painstaking restoration, led by Brookner's nephew Aaron Brookner over twelve years, was unveiled at the New York Film Festival in September 2025.
Brookner's final film, Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989), was a narrative feature he co-wrote and directed. He died on April 27, 1989, three days before his 35th birthday, of AIDS-related complications. His archive, discovered across multiple locations in the US and Europe in 2012, formed the basis for his nephew Aaron Brookner's documentary tribute Uncle Howard (2016), executive produced by Jim Jarmusch.
Get in touch with the artist(s)