{"id":3300,"date":"2002-07-03T19:30:57","date_gmt":"2002-07-03T18:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=3300"},"modified":"2018-01-25T15:01:01","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T15:01:01","slug":"harry-smith-american-magus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2002\/07\/03\/harry-smith-american-magus\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Smith: American Magus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY SMITH: AMERICAN MAGUS<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong>Wednesday 3 July 2002, at 7:30pm<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> London The Photographers&#8217; Gallery<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A documentary by Paola Igliori (editor of an indispensable book with the same title) which provides a fascinating insight into the life and work of singular genius Harry Smith, whose pioneering abstract films were only a small part of his anthropological pursuits. His broad range of interests, including alchemy, the occult, folk music, field recordings, Seminole textiles and Ukranian Easter Eggs, are represented in this suitably kaleidoscopic film which flits between mysticism and secularity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Paola Igliori, American Magus, Italy\/USA, 2002, video, colour, sound, 93 min<\/strong><\/p>\n<a onclick=\"wpex_toggle(673593131, 'PROGRAMME NOTES', 'Read less'); return false;\" class=\"wpex-link\" id=\"wpexlink673593131\" href=\"#\">PROGRAMME NOTES<\/a><div class=\"wpex_div\" id=\"wpex673593131\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>HARRY SMITH: AMERICAN MAGUS<\/strong><br \/>\nWednesday 3 July 2002, at 7:30pm<br \/>\nLondon The Photographers&#8217; Gallery<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMERICAN MAGUS <\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Paola Igliori, Italy\/USA, 2002, video, colour, sound, 93 min<br \/>\n(UK premiere)<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt took a little time, but now at last a full length documentary has been made about the cult figure Harry Smith, one of the hidden jewels of the intellectual and artistic history of America in the 20th century. Smith became known to a certain extent with his <em>Anthology of American Folk Music<\/em> in 1952, but his brilliant spirit and versatility extended much further. In 1950, he received a Guggenheim grant for his non-objective films and paintings, as anthropologist he was interested in anything from peyote to string figures. He was a revolutionary collector looking for the synchronous patterns in different kinds of objects to find their inner language and he was one of the most grisly and erudite occultists ever.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Filmmaker and poet Paola Igliori, who had an intense relationship with Smith in the last months of his life, uses interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frank, Jonas Mekas and others, and pictures from his films, his countless collections, synthetic diagrams and rare archive material, to sketch a fascinating portrait of the man who influenced artists from Gregory Corso to DJ Spooky, and of whom was said that he lived a thousand lives in one. Or, to quote one of the many eloquent statements: \u201cWithout Harry Smith I wouldn&#8217;t have existed!\u201d (Bob Dylan).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(Catalogue of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2002)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#top\">Back to top<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infinite-projection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300","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=3300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}