Broken Hallelujah

Jack Smith was a '60s underground legend. Before he was 30, this gay, Jewish, cross-dressing filmmaker had made one of the most influential films of all time, the 1963 avant-garde classic, "Flaming Creatures".

Though eventually banned in the state of New York for its array of bare breasts and flaccid penises, many bright lights of the New York underground hailed it as a masterpiece.

Purportedly made for just $300, Flaming Creatures features exotically dressed transvestites, a rape and enough bare-bones spectacle to make it the fringe cinema's answer to the exotic adventures like Arabian Nights (1942) that so enchanted Smith in his youth.

Avant-garde film enthusiast Andy Ditzler, who almost single-handedly has been keeping film culture alive in Atlanta, will man his blessedly creaky film projector to feature a 16mm print of Flaming Creatures in a one-night homage to some of the pioneers of American underground cinema, Carnivals of Ecstasy, at Eyedrum Gallery in Atlanta. The evening also features a new Ira Cohen work, "Brain Damage", as well as his new expanded "Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda".

The screening is part of Table of the Elements Festival No. 4: Bohrium, which presents five days of music (John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Captain Beefheart, ) and film that shuns the ivory tower for something that more closely resembles punk rock's outsider ethos and anti-establishment buck.

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