A recent retrospective on the cult film-maker revealed his inspiration – a dazzling 1940s diva who could not even act
Jack Smith and Maria Montez were made for each other. They never met. Sadly, she had died before he started making films – drowning in her bathtub in Paris at the age of 39 on 7 September 1951. Yet her spirit imbued his first movie, Buzzards over Bagdad, which reimagined her teaming with Jon Hall and Sabu in Arabian Nights (1942), one of the garishly fantasies that earned Montez the nickname "the Queen of Technicolor".
Indeed, she inspired many of the works contained in the Ica's recent landmark season, Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes, and even acted as a posthumous beard for his avant-garde manifesto, The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez, which appeared in the Winter 1962 edition of Film Culture and laid out Smith's vision for a new Queer cinema. In so doing,...
Jack Smith and Maria Montez were made for each other. They never met. Sadly, she had died before he started making films – drowning in her bathtub in Paris at the age of 39 on 7 September 1951. Yet her spirit imbued his first movie, Buzzards over Bagdad, which reimagined her teaming with Jon Hall and Sabu in Arabian Nights (1942), one of the garishly fantasies that earned Montez the nickname "the Queen of Technicolor".
Indeed, she inspired many of the works contained in the Ica's recent landmark season, Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes, and even acted as a posthumous beard for his avant-garde manifesto, The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez, which appeared in the Winter 1962 edition of Film Culture and laid out Smith's vision for a new Queer cinema. In so doing,...
- 9/23/2011
- by David Parkinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Ron Rice (from An Introduction to the American Underground Film)
Yeah, as far as I know, this is the only photograph of ’60s underground filmmaker Ron Rice on the web, which I scanned from Sheldon Renan’s book An Introduction to the American Underground Film. I don’t know why there aren’t any photos of Rice, but I thought I’d post this up in case anybody’s interested. Feel free to disseminate so that the title of this article becomes obsolete. Click the above image for a larger version.
Rice, though, did die at a very young age. He was only 32 in 1964 when he passed away from complications from pneumonia in Mexico. Sadly, he only made four films, but they made an incredible impact on the underground scene. Only his last film, Chumlum (1964), has officially been released on DVD, which you can find on the Treasures IV: American...
Yeah, as far as I know, this is the only photograph of ’60s underground filmmaker Ron Rice on the web, which I scanned from Sheldon Renan’s book An Introduction to the American Underground Film. I don’t know why there aren’t any photos of Rice, but I thought I’d post this up in case anybody’s interested. Feel free to disseminate so that the title of this article becomes obsolete. Click the above image for a larger version.
Rice, though, did die at a very young age. He was only 32 in 1964 when he passed away from complications from pneumonia in Mexico. Sadly, he only made four films, but they made an incredible impact on the underground scene. Only his last film, Chumlum (1964), has officially been released on DVD, which you can find on the Treasures IV: American...
- 4/16/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
By Michael Atkinson
"Our starved instincts have been clamoring for centuries for more and more substitutes," Henry Miller once wrote, "and as a substitute for living the cinema is ideal." There may not be a single filmmaker that Miller's cynical observation describes better, sans the cynicism, than Jack Smith, famed New York avant-gardist, gay downtown gadfly, rebel performer and temperamental film artist. All Smith ever wanted was to create a new world for himself, separate from the mundane, ugly and unjust world he saw around him, and if we know his name today, it's because he largely succeeded. Mary Jordan's documentary "Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis" (2007) is, for a new generation with heretofore unprecedented access (on DVD) to the entire legacy of experimental film, a smashing introduction into the world of mid-century, iconic D.I.Y. rooftop moviemaking, where penniless idiosyncrats could become world famous with a borrowed camera,...
"Our starved instincts have been clamoring for centuries for more and more substitutes," Henry Miller once wrote, "and as a substitute for living the cinema is ideal." There may not be a single filmmaker that Miller's cynical observation describes better, sans the cynicism, than Jack Smith, famed New York avant-gardist, gay downtown gadfly, rebel performer and temperamental film artist. All Smith ever wanted was to create a new world for himself, separate from the mundane, ugly and unjust world he saw around him, and if we know his name today, it's because he largely succeeded. Mary Jordan's documentary "Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis" (2007) is, for a new generation with heretofore unprecedented access (on DVD) to the entire legacy of experimental film, a smashing introduction into the world of mid-century, iconic D.I.Y. rooftop moviemaking, where penniless idiosyncrats could become world famous with a borrowed camera,...
- 9/9/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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