Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars

One of the great unrealized theatrical productions of the twentieth century, Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS would have been the legendary avant-garde filmmaker’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 U.S.) for a holistic performance at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Over the course of the project’s ill-fated conception, documentary director Howard Brookner follows Wilson, composers Philip Glass and David Byrne, and several production troupes as they seek to perfect an epic that encompasses the American Civil War, the life