Beverly Grant

In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith’s life than with his work, analyzing Smith’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

“Coming Attractions” looks backward into the memories and forward into the future of Francis Francine, an elegantly dowdy transvestite of, and indeed beyond, a certain age. The memories, haunted by a Spirit of Seductions Past (played by a quite glorious naked young lady who fortunately bears absolutely no resemblance to Francis Fran cine) suggest a generally lurid life of sumptuous sex and questionable liaisons. The future, presented by an ancient fortune teller with a wonderful crystal ball that holds a lively go‐go dancer and that seems to mediate between interchanging black and white halves of the screen, follows Francis Francine through the reactivation of an ancient affair, to her death (a jealous ex‐lover) and her triumphant entrance into a pastoral paradise that looks like a cross between several scenes from “81/2” and “The Embarkation for Cythera” in drag.

Straight and Narrow is a study of subjective colour and visual rhythm, although it is printed on black and white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause most viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory colour effects. Through the intermediary of rhythm, the maximal impact is drawn from the simplest of universal human images: straight horizontal and vertical lines. Set to a strong percussive musical background, rapidly alternating images of black and white straight lines are juxtaposed in precise rhythmic patterns to create specific colours... if you can watch without becoming hypnotised...

“1950년부터 영상 일기를 찍었어요. 언제나 볼렉스 카메라를 들고 다니며, 내가 만나게 되는 상황이나 친구, 뉴욕의 모습, 계절의 변화 등 즉각적인 현실에 반응하고자 했죠. 어떤 날에는 열 프레임, 어떤 날에는 10초, 또 어떤 날에는 10분 정도 촬영을 했습니다. 물론, 아무것도 찍지 않은 날도 있었어요. 일기를 쓸 때는 ‘회상’이라는 절차가 수반되는데, 보통 책상에 앉아서 그날 하루를 되돌아보며 일기를 써 내려가기 때문이죠. 한편 영상(카메라) 일기의 경우, 어떤 순간에 대한 즉각적인 반응을 포착할 수 있습니다. 특정 대상을 카메라에 제대로 담던 담지 못하는 것과 관계없이, 순간의 반응 자체를 카메라가 기록합니다. 어떤 상황에 다시 돌아가 촬영을 재개한다면, 그것은 재연된 영상이 되어버리죠. 이는 사건이나 감정이 수반될 수밖에 없습니다. 일어나는 일을 있는 그대로 포착하려면, 내가 사용하고 있는 도구(여기에서의 도구는 볼렉스 카메라를 말한다)에 대한 온전한 이해가 필수적입니다. 내가 반응을 보이는 현실뿐만 아니라 내가 반응함과 동시에 내 감정의 상태(와 모든 기억)까지 포착할 수 있어야 하기 때문이죠. 다시 말해, 카메라를 들고 촬영이 이루어지는 바로 그 장소에서 영상의 구조화(편집) 작업까지 끝낼 수 있어야 합니다. 월든에서 여러분이 만나는 모든 영상은 카메라에 담겨있는 영상과 동일합니다. 1964년부터 1968년까지 촬영한 영상을 순차적으로 연결한 것입니다. 사운드트랙의 경우, 목소리, 지하철 소리, 길거리 소음 등 촬영 당시 수집한 사운드에 쇼팽의 음악-난 로맨틱한 사람입니다-과 때때로 의미 있고 또 때때로 의미 없는 사운드를 섞어 제작하였습니다.”

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

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 Andy Warhol's screen tests, focusing on an actor's face for 4-5 mins.

The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.

His Oriental predator is at first clothed in black, her 'victim' in white; slowly the costumes change, the victim acquiring a veil of mourning, until finally - as if to underline the ambiguity and interchangeability of their respective roles - the colours are reversed altogether. Still more interesting is the way in which, as the game becomes more ambiguous, Dwoskin adds fresh layers of make-up to his characters' faces, until they become almost caricature masks of their original selves.

Filmed in New York in 1964, completed in London 1967.

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.

화려하고 개성 강한 복장의 청년들이 해먹에 누워 저마다 평화로운 시간을 보낸다.

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.

The feature length Normal Love is Jack Smith’s follow up to his 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 cast includes Mario Montez, Diane de Prima, Tiny Tim, Francis Francine, Beverley Grant and John Vaccaro. Smith was known to constantly re-edit the film, often during screenings as it was still unspooling from the projector. This print has been restored under the supervision of Jerry Tartaglia and is provided by Filmmakers Co-operative in New York City.