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A film by Mary Jordan “Entrancing! Evokes something of Smith’s floating, ravishingly colorful dreamscapes – a menagerie of creatures!” |
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| “Mary Jordan’s terrific documentary unfolds with the same amount of passion found in one of Smith’s fever dreams.” – Melissa Anderson, Time Out NY “An accessible, entertaining documentary.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, The New York Times “The notorious ne plus ultra of underground filmmakers! Smith was the cult filmmaker’s cult filmmaker!” – Ed Halter, Village Voice “Smith, a penniless visionary in the purest sense, was a fountain of transgressive ideas that generations of artists have tapped for their own work. (The film is) a unique collage …winningly done… animated by the sound of Smith’s own voice, which hovers as a slightly unearthly narrator speaking in a wobbly falsetto. A grand evocation of a bohemian New York that might seem to be long gone, yet proves to be ever resilient, like a daisy pushing up through the concrete.” – Steve Dollar, The New York Sun “A happy paradox, an inspiring movie full of a sense of loss… Much of what Warhol did, Smith did first. Artfully put together. The real joys… are clips of Smith’s films and performances and tapes of Smith’s voice.” – David Frankel, Interview “A seminal counterculture artist! Not to see it is to fail to understand the avant-garde scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s! To watch Jordan’s docu is to be reinvigorated and glad that Smith will be remembered by it.” – Jay Carr, amNY "A lovingly crafted portrait of the artist...an aesthetic manifesto." – Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine For Jack Smith (1932-1989), Atlantis was both the idea of a fantastical utopia and the reality of the Lower East Side apartment in which this prophetic artist staged baroque, improvisational multi-hour one-man theatrical productions, often with a cast of stuffed animals and dolls. An avant-garde photographer, filmmaker, actor, performance artist, and all around “flaming creature,” Smith has been credited as a major influence by Fellini, Godard and Jarmusch. In Mary Jordan’s mesmerizing portrait, he fairly jumps off the screen: a combination mystic, comedian and madman, a protean artist whose vast energy and creativity were undermined (or perversely fed?) by the poverty of his day-to-day life and his paranoid misgivings about just about everything. If there is a heaven for the wonderfully bizarre, Jack Smith resides there, accompanied by his patron saint, Maria Montez. Produced by Kenneth Wayne Peralta & Mary Jordan • USA • 2006 • 96 minutes Links: |
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