<\/p>\n
JACK SMITH & THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS<\/strong>
\nSaturday 28 October 2006, at 9pm
\n<\/strong>London National Film Theatre NFT3<\/p>\nJACK SMITH & THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS
\n<\/strong>Mary Jordan, USA, 2006, video, colour, sound, 96 min<\/strong><\/p>\nIn 1964, the year Lenny Bruce was convicted of obscenity after a New York stage appearance, Jack Smith\u2019s pansexual phantasmagoria Flaming Creatures<\/em> was busted by the NYPD. It was eventually banned in 22 states and four countries; as late as 1968, Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Attorney General was impounding prints of the movie.<\/p>\nDocumentaries need self-dramatizers, and being a diva was Jack Smith\u2019s art and life. At the start of Mary Jordan\u2019s irresistible documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis<\/em>, the artist\u2019s reedy voice is heard intoning, \u201cDoctor, doctor, tell me, please: Is my brain a germ or a disease?\u201d Late in life, he says of his work: \u201cI was knocking myself out to make this stuff. And I always assumed that people would see this and have pity and give me a little support. [Now he shouts:] They didn\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\nSmith was inspired as a kid by the Scheherazade schlock of B-movie queen Maria Montez. As a director, he renamed one of his drag stars Mario Montez and starred him in no-budget avant-garde movies of delirious (and now endearing) Caligulan excess. Both Mario and Jack went to work for Andy Warhol, who called Smith \u201cthe only person I would ever copy. He\u2019s just so terrific, and I think he makes the best movies.\u201d Warhol\u2019s Factory and the films that emerged from it \u2013 Chelsea Girls<\/em> and the rest \u2013 might not have existed without Smith\u2019s influence. Consider that a curse or a blessing.<\/p>\nWith Mephistophelean good looks swathed in leopard-skin couture, Smith was a ready-made icon of the Underground, and an easy magnet for police and politicians. \u201cMoral decay is spreading through our country and our society,\u201d declaimed one bluenose, brandishing a poster for Flaming Creatures<\/em> \u2013 thus giving priceless free publicity to the film he meant to denounce.<\/p>\nWhat was the big deal? Languid displays of male and female genitals. As one of Smith\u2019s avatars, John Waters, says: \u201cSeeing a limp penis \u2013 in an arty way, in a way that was intellectual \u2013 was revolutionary. The police came because of it! Imagine, calling the cops because you saw a dick in a movie.\u201d The furor made Smith notorious but not famous. Within a few years of the Flaming Creatures<\/em> fracas, new and more lurid displays of artistic obscenity were on display without police interruption. Smith kept at his mission for another quarter century, but audiences didn\u2019t always come. Yet he soldiered on \u2013 even, one night, when no paying customers showed up for one of his live performances. He did it anyway, all seven hours.<\/p>\nAvant-garde art is hard; dying is easy. In 1991, languishing with a fatal bout of AIDS in a Manhattan hospital, the lifelong kvetch was suddenly buoyant. The longtime starving artist told playwright Ron Tavel, \u201cIt\u2019s the best food I\u2019ve had in my life.\u201d His mind has sustenance too: dreams of his eternal movie goddess, Maria (not Mario) Montez. It would be lovely if lots of people saw this documentary about an avant-gardist who loved old Hollywood movies. It might remind them that there are lands beyond today\u2019s blockbusters and timid dramas that are worth visiting and, for an hour and a half, living in.<\/p>\n
(Richard Corliss)<\/p>\n
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Alina Rudnitskaya\u2019s humanistic approach to documentary filmmaking often brings out the humour in her chosen subjects. As an introduction to her work, this programme depicts three diverse groups of contemporary Russian women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-1345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-film-festival-2006","tag-london-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}