Jack Smith (1932-1989) was a New York-based filmmaker, photographer, and actor known for his pioneering influence in experimental filmmaking and performance art. Smith moved to New York City in 1953, where he attended film classes at the City College of New York and worked as a photographer. He worked as an actor and assistant with Ken Jacobs for two years before making his first film, Scotch Tape, in 1959.
Smith created his most well-known film, Flaming Creatures, in 1963. The film was confiscated by the New York Police Department and banned throughout the United States due to nudity and charges of obscenity, and was later ruled obscene by a New York Criminal Court. Jonas Mekas, a friend of Smith's and the founder of the journal Film Culture and the Anthology Film Archives, championed the film and, despite the ban, screened it in theaters and hotel rooms around the country and at the Knokke-le-Zoute film festival in Belgium in 1964. This led to an argument between the two, as Smith believed that Mekas was responsible for the confiscation of the film as well as its notoriety. Mekas disagreed with Smith's practice of constantly re-editing his work, fearing that this would alter the original genius of the work, and used this to defend his possession of the film. As a result of this disagreement, Smith never produced another film in entirety as he was constantly editing his work, even while he was screening it. He also refused to have his work out of his possession. Many of his subsequent works focused on Mekas, including I Was a Mekas Collaborator, Death in Uncle Archives' Vault, and his adaptation of The Critic by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, variously titled The Critic, The Lobsters, Lucky Landlordism of Roachcrust, and Lucky Landlordism of Lotusland.
Actress Maria Montez was another profound influence on Smith's work. Known as the Queen of Technicolor, she was the star of Universal's Technicolor adventure movies filmed in the 1940s. Smith's performances, sets, and costumes were influenced by Montez and the atmosphere of her films. In the early 1960s, Smith convinced the young drag queen Rene Rivera to adopt the name Mario Montez in homage to Maria Montez. Mario starred in Flaming Creatures and other Smith performances, before becoming one of Andy Warhol's superstars.
Throughout the late 1960s and into the mid-1980s, Smith began to focus more on performance art and combined live performances with screenings of his films and slideshows. In addition to the Mekas inspired performances, shows created during this time period include Death of a Penguin, The Secret of Rented Island, Sinbad and the Rented World, No President, and I Was a Male Yvonne De Carlo for the Lucky Landlord Underground. Smith also published essays and short stories in Film Culture and other periodicals and appeared as an actor in productions by Andy Warhol, Robert Wilson, and Ken Jacobs.
Smith died in 1989 from AIDS-related pneumonia. His influence has been identified in genres of experimental filmmaking and performance art on the broad scale, and specifically in the works of Warhol, John Waters, Laurie Anderson, and Cindy Sherman.
