Jack Smith

A man investigates the grisly crimes that occurred in a former insane asylum, unsettling the locals who all seem to have something to hide.

Ron Rice's Chumlum is one of those films in which the conditions of its construction are integral to the experience of watching it. It is a record of a cadre of creative people having fun on camera, playing dress-up, dancing, flirting, lazing around.

Batman Dracula is a 1964 black and white American film produced and directed by Andy Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. The film was screened only at Warhol's art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol made the movie as a homage. Batman Dracula is considered to be the first film featuring a blatantly campy Batman. The film was thought to have been lost until scenes from it were shown at some length in the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.

Love Thing captures the emerging multicultural spirit and personal freedom of the late 1970s with an outrageous attitude and experimental style. A work in progress now finally completed it's the last American musical comedy from that era which can be viewed today as a prophetic satire. Through its provocative, entertaining storyline highlighted by song and dance, the movie answers the burning question of our time, "What happens after the marriage?

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

At the court of the Yellow Emperor, the Majoon Traveler & Lady Firefly appear in the Hall of Unconscious Magnetism.

Jack Smith poses in elaborate costumes, plays with everyday objects, and performs for the camera while his disjointed voiceover unfolds through songs, personal reflections, and provocative stories. Assembled by Ken Jacobs from unfinished footage shot by Bob Fleischner, this experimental film blends performance, fantasy, and dark humor into an unconventional portrait of its subject.

A follow-up to now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith’s role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The director was known to constantly re-edit the film, often during screenings as it was still unspooling from the projector.

“New York plays itself, as Taylor Mead and Winifred Bryan regale in pas de deux among the trashcans and the towers. The Studiedly Goofy and the Monumentally Grand are joined in masterly pas de don’t [...] The awed couple do battle with the status quo and teach the world to dance on the head of a bin. Rice detects real dignity in Bryan and amazing grace in Mead as they essay solitary promenades through the parks, subways and streets of a wintery New York landscape. Photographed and directed by Ron Rice, edited and scored by Taylor Mead.” –Edward Leffingwell

Takes an in-depth look at the lives and times of the people who hung out with Andy Warhol and "worked" at the Silver Factory during the Sixties, making it all click as a new counter-culture arose and began to exert its influence throughout the arts.

"The question is, it is either going to be a stoned age or a new Stone Age" - Louis Brigante

A rapid montage collage featuring Jack Smith and a Warholian kiss.

An examination of the history of the U.S. through archival footage and contrasting views of society, incorporating audiovisual material ranging from political campaign films to animated cartoons to children’s phonograph records, featuring Al Jolson, Mickey Mouse, the young Jack Smith, and a half-dozen American presidents.

One of four finished Batman Dracula shorts shown publicly by Warhol.

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

One of four finished Batman Dracula shorts shown publicly by Warhol.

This is one of several films and slide shows that feature Smith as a mock celebrity. It opens with the excerpt from No President originally called "Marsh Gas of Flatulandia" - several minutes of black and white footage of steam escaping from manholes segues to an interior scene of various creatures emerging from dry ice vapors - then shifts to show the filmmaker, clad in a leopard skin jump suit, attended by a nurse as he sits amidst the detritus of his duplex loft. A fan presents him with a black-and-white glamour shot to autograph as Ondine, dressed entirely in black leather, snaps his picture. Violence erupts as the nurse takes out a whip to discipline the star's fans. When a female creature pulls out the same dagger depicted in the glamour shot, Smith jumps up and shakes the weapon from her hand. The action is post-scripted with footage of a steam shovel patrolling the rubble where the Broadway Central Hotel once stood.

16mm, color, silent

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

During its 1969 showings at the Elgin Theater, No President was preceded by the color short filmed according to Smith’s direction by photographer Don Snyder (who also shot slides during the same session). Smith appeared as his red-wigged, plastic-jawed, alter ego Rose Courtyard, seated in a wheelchair amid the detritus of the Plaster Foundation. The film was accompanied by two rounds of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America”. Dressed in a red satin gown, clutching a bouquet of dead roses, Rose is finally moved to stand up and salute. The film was found in a can labeled “Song for Rent”, title of a 1971 mixed media production in which Smith appeared. (J. Hoberman)

A phantasmagoric exploration into the violence we house within ourselves.

Shot at Warhol's Silver Factory, Camp features a group of Superstars putting on a "summer camp" talent show complete with singing, dancing, jokes, poetry, and Gerard Malanga as master of ceremonies.

A sort of addendum to Smith's second feature, NORMAL LOVE, but which stands on its own as an anarchic ode to (and explosion of) pop culture, featuring none other than Tiny Tim.

The filmmaker brings his camera to the Bowery, filming the homeless, interacting with them.