With Jerry Sims, Ken Jacobs and Reese Haire.
16mm Kodachrome shot on the rubble strewn site of the future Lincoln Center.
The title arises from the piece of scotch tape which had become wedged in the camera gate.
1959-1962, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $35
"This short film, restored in 1995, stars Jerry Sims and the late filmmaker, Bob Fleischner. It is an early filmic exploration of the 'aesthetic of delirium' which Smith developed in his later films. At one time, in the 1970s this film was treated by Smith as a fragment, and included in various film/performances with No President. The audio cassette has 12 minutes of material and can be played at any point for the duration of the film." - J.T. Plaster Foundation
1960, 16mm, color/sound on cassette tape, 5m, $40
"[Jack Smith] has graced the anarchic liberation of new American cinema with graphic and rhythmic power worthy of the best of formal cinema. He has attained for the first time in motion pictures a high level of art which is absolutely lacking in decorum; and a treatment of sex which makes us aware of the restraint of all previous filmmakers.
"He has shown more clearly than anyone before how the poet's license includes all things, not only of spirit, but also of flesh; not only of dreams and of symbol, but also of solid reality. In no other art but the movies could this have so fully been done; and their capacity was realized by Smith." - Film Culture
"During its final deliberation, the selection jury decided to state explicitly that the majority of its members recognized the aesthetical and experimental qualities of the film FLAMING CREATURES by Jack Smith, but had to ascertain unanimously that the showing of it was impossible in regard to Belgian laws." - Program Notes, Third International Experimental Film Competition, Knokke-Le-Zoute, Belgium, 1964
Awards: Fifth Independent Film Award, Film Culture; Prix Film Maudit, Third Int'l Film Exposition, Knokke-Le-Zoute, Belgium, 1964.
1963, 16mm, b&w/so, 45m, $125
NO PRESIDENT was Jack Smith's third feature film. In this version, restored by filmmaker Jerry Tartaglia, the scenes alternate between elaborate tableaux shot at Smith's Green Street loft with found footage of former presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. The film features underground stars from 1968, including Tally Brown, Jerry Sims, Irving Rosenthal Donna Kerness, Mario Montez, and Charles Henri Ford.
1968, 16mm, color/sound on cassette, 45m, $135
Restored by Jerry Tartaglia, 1997.
"I WAS A MALE YVONNE DECARLO, which stars Smith himself, takes its title from one of his live performances: I Was a Male Yvonne DeCarlo for the Lucky Landlord Underground, staged in the early 1980s. Shot mainly during the late '60s and edited a decade or more later, I WAS A MALE YVONNE DECARLO is one of several films and slide shows that feature the filmmaker as a mock celebrity. It opens with the excerpt from No President originally called 'Marsh Gas of Flatulandia' - several minutes of black and white footage of steam escaping from manholes segues to an interior scene of various creatures emerging from dry ice vapors - then shifts to show the filmmaker, clad in a leopard skin jump suit, attended by a nurse as he sits amidst the detritus of his duplex loft on Grand and Greene Street.
"Smith waits under the visible movie lights, drumming the fingers. A fan presents him with a black and white glamour shot (Smith in profile, posed with a sinuously curved dagger) to autograph as the Warhol Superstar Ondine, dressed entirely in black leather, snaps his picture. Violence erupts as the nurse takes out a whip to discipline the star's fans. When a female creature pulls out the same dagger depicted in the glamour shot, Smith jumps up and shakes the weapon from her hand. The action is post-scripted with footage of a steam shovel patrolling the rubble where the Broadway Central hotel once stood." - J. Hoberman
Note: Sound on tape from the Jack Smith Record Collection (Jerry Tartaglia).
1968-1970s, 16mm, b&w/sound on cassette tape, 30m, $85