Beverly Grant
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Naissant
Dec 31, 1964
Library
Jan 01, 1970Initially titled "Books for all". A moving institutional commission in which the filmmakers lovingly portray New Jersey's public library system.
Batman Dracula
Jul 01, 1964Batman 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.
Thriller
Normal Love
Jan 01, 1963The 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.
Chinese Checkers
Feb 07, 1965His 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.
Romance
The Illiac Passion
Dec 30, 1967Prometheus, 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.
Drama
Screen Test #3
Oct 23, 1966
Flaming Creatures
Apr 29, 1963Filmmaker 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.
Comedy
Andy Warhol Screen Tests
Nov 28, 1965The 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.
Documentary
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda
Jan 07, 1968At the court of the Yellow Emperor, the Majoon Traveler & Lady Firefly appear in the Hall of Unconscious Magnetism.
Fantasy
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.
Documentary
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Nov 23, 2013An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Documentary
Chumlum
Dec 29, 1963Ron Rice's Chumlum is one of those films in which the conditions of its construction are integral to the experience of watching it. It is a record of a cadre of creative people having fun on camera, playing dress-up, dancing, flirting, lazing around.
Documentary
Batman Dracula – “Batman on Beach with Nymph”
Jul 01, 1964One of four finished Batman Dracula shorts shown publicly by Warhol.
Batman Dracula – “Jack Gerard Smoking”
Jul 01, 1964One of four finished Batman Dracula shorts shown publicly by Warhol.
Straight and Narrow
Dec 31, 1970Straight 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...
Coming Attractions
Mar 19, 1970“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.
