|
Perhaps America’s most important artist from the last fifty years, Jack Smith is simultaneously hailed as the godfather of performance art, a groundbreaking photographer and the ‘William Blake of film’. His utopian ideals, artistic processes and bejeweled artworks left no generation untouched since, and became essential influences to contemporary art superstars like Andy Warhol, Federico Fellini and Matthew Barney.
In her feature-length film debut, director Mary Jordan combines Smith’s rare and unseen films and photographs with rare audio recordings, acting appearances, and other relics squeezed from Smith’s vaulted archives. Commentaries from art luminaries, critics and Smith’s friends and enemies (such as screenwriter/playwright Ronald Tavel, New York Observer critic Andrew Sarris, transvestite extraordinaire Mario Montez, and filmmaker Ken Jacobs) intercut Smith himself proffering condemnations of capitalism, critics and institutional-art “gatekeepers.” Jordan also delves into Smith’s tenuous relationship with Andy Warhol—who adopted Smith’s ideas and actors in his own work (including Smith’s “Superstars” concept), his vilification of New American cinema pioneer Jonas Mekas, and other previously undocumented biographical topics.
From the Whitney to the Louvre, Smith is acknowledged as one of America’s most influential artists, yet his legacy remains at the edges of obscurity. Pure in his artistic pursuits, Smith smashed head-on into the politics intersecting creativity, capitalism and meaning in contemporary art. Since his 1989 death, Smith’s work has been rarely publicly displayed. Still his influence pervades contemporary art and pop-culture today. This documentary portrait pays homage to New York’s ultimate anti-hero and the original King of the Underground.
cast:
Tony Conrad
Ken Jacobs
Sylvère Lotringer
Judith Malina
Jonas Mekas
Mario Montez
Ronald Tavel
John Waters
John Zorn
Agosto Machado
Andrew Sarris
Ari Roussimoff
Billy Name
Ela Troyano
Gary Indiana
George Kuchar
Helen Gee
Henry Hills
Holly Woodlawn
Ira Cohen
Ivan Galietti
Jerry Tartaglia
John Matturri
John Vaccaro
Lawrence Rinder
Mary Woronov
Mike Kelley
Nayland Blake
Nick Zedd
Richard Foreman
Robert Heide
Robert Wilson
Taylor Mead
Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt
Uzi Parnes
William Niederkorn
Further Information:
Bonus Features Include:
Glitter
Agosto Machado with Mario Montez on Jack the Master
Lawrence Rinder on Jack's photography
Ken Jacobs on Jack's life as theater
Jack's Loft
Mario Montez on being Mario Montez
Includes 5 more interviews about Jack’s life.
| Catalog Number: MC-822 |
Type: Feature |
Genre: Documentary |
| Copyright: 2008 |
Length: 95 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: |
UPC: 829567052525 |
| Label: Arts Alliance |
Notes: +30 Minutes Bonus Features
This title is available in Europe for Wholesale - List Prices: £19.99 / 29.95€
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-822 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Program MC-822 may be licensed for Exhibition.
2008-08-25 Boston Globe
By Wesley Morris
Mary Jordan's documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy.
| 2008-07-22 Time Out
By
Ben Walters
Jordan’s film is a glorious visual achievement in its own right, as well as part of the rancorous ongoing dispute over Smith’s legacy.
| 2008-07-22 Film Journal International
By
David Noh
Mary Jordan's documentary is an impressive, fascinating achievement.
| 2008-07-22 New York Magazine
By David Edelstein
In Jordan’s documentary you see the roots of camp as distinctly melancholy and yearning, a world of the spirit that can never be made flesh
| 2008-07-22 Entertainment Weekly
By Owen Gleiberman
The intoxicating documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, directed by Mary Jordan, is a love poem to the New York City of the '50s and '60s, when Smith, the visionary of camp, more or less invented performance art.
| 2008-07-22 Morris
By Wesley
Mary Jordan's documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy.
| 2008-07-22 TV Guide's Movie Guide
By Ken Fox
Thank heavens for Mary Jordan's vibrant, funny and tragic documentary, an entertaining hodgepodge of artifacts and impressions of a "creature" whose influence on photography, drama, film and art is still felt today.
| 2008-06-24 New York Times
By Matt Zoller Seitz
It’s gratifying when an influential artist is profiled in an accessible documentary.
|
|
Alice Neel
MC-831, 2008
|
Alice Neel (1900-1984), one of the great portrait painters of the 20th century, reinvented the genre by expressing the inner landscape of her subjects, who included luminaries such as Andy Warhol, Bella Abzug, and Allen Ginsberg as well as her... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Balthus
MC-844, 1997
|
Award-winning director Damian Pettigrew (Fellini: I'm a Born Liar) offers this definitive portrait of Balthus, a modern artist whose work was nonetheless out of step with most modern movements. His huge canvases with their thickly applied paint... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Black, White + Gray
MC-796, 2008
|
Black White + Gray examines the life and lives of influential curator and collector, Sam Wagstaff, a veritable force in the art world for nearly three decades. The film reveals the symbiotic relationship Wagstaff shared with photographer Robert... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Henri Cartier Bresson: The Impassioned Eye
MC-507, 2005
|
“[Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye] offers insight into the artistic process, documenting a man who approached photography with one simple directive: ‘To sieze the moment.’” – San Francisco Bay Guardian
Director Heinz Bütler’s intimate... more >
|
|
|
|
|
How To Draw A Bunny
MC-284, 2000
|
How to Draw a Bunny, a 90 minute feature film on the artist Ray Johnson, won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and recently the Prix de Public at the famed Recontre Film Festival in Paris. How to Draw a Bunny was named as one of... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Next: A Primer on Urban Painting
MC-833, 2008
|
“NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting” is a documentary exploration of graffiti-based visual art as a world culture. The filmmaker profiles the art form in nine countries including USA, Canada, France, Holland, Germany, England, Spain, Japan and Brazil.... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Order, The
MC-246, 2002
|
Matthew Barney's legendary CREMASTER CYCLE was hailed by the New York Times as "An inspired benchmark of ambition, scope and forthright provocation for art in the new century." Nine years in the making, the five films that comprise the CREMASTER... more >
|
|
|
|
|
Who Gets to Call it Art?
MC-542, 2006
|
Featuring never-before-seen footage of legendary artists, exclusive interviews and an elite variety of the ‘Who’s Who’ New York entertainment scene. The film explores one of the most creatively fertile periods of American Art, profiling Andy... more >
|
|
|
|
No screenings found
|
Email this page to a friend
