Friday, November 30, 2012
Film Jack Smith and the original "New Normal"
Posted by Gabe Wardell on Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 10:35 AM
A half-century before sass-talking gays and ironic camp occupied prime time television in programs like "Modern Family," "The New Normal," and "Glee," underground filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith pioneered the modern queer aesthetic.
Smith is best known for getting under Strom Thurmond's skin with Flaming Creatures, a naughty Dionysian visual orgasm famous for being banned virtually everywhere. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Thurmond described Flaming Creatures thus:
"Five unrelated badly filmed sequences ... a mass rape scene involving two females and many males which lasts for 7 minutes, showing the female pubic area, the male penis, male massaging the female vagina and breasts, cunnilingus, masturbation of the male organ ... lesbian activity between two women ... homosexual acts between a man dressed as a female, who emerges from a casket, and other males, including masturbation of the visible male organ ... homosexuals dancing together and other disconnected erotic activity, such as massaging the female breasts and group sexual activity."
Smith followed-up Creatures with the lesser known, though decidedly more ambitious Normal Love, a feature-length fever dream homage to 30's and 40's Hollywood horror films as only Smith could deliver: a visual collage including elaborate homemade sets, a giant Claes Oldenburg cake, requisite debauchery, and buckets of horror kitsch.
Andy Ditzler, whose Film Love series keeps the 16mm celluloid flow of the American Avant-Garde Cinema alive, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center present Normal Love for one show only tonight (Friday, November 30) at 8:00 p.m.
Complete information is available here:
http://thecontemporary.org/programming/2012-fall-programming/screening-jack-smith/
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