Presented in cooperation with the San Francisco Cinematheque. J. Hoberman, Village Voice film critic and author, has been working toward the preservation of the films of Jack Smith (1932-1989). Tonight he presents a rare screening of Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963 , 45 mins, B&W, 16mm) and other archival material. Smith had a tremendous influence on contemporary art, notwithstanding the fact that, when he died, he was little known outside a relatively small community of artists. The influence of his casually outrageous style, which interpreted the B movie in a sexually inventive manner, and his refusal to separate his persona from his art, can be seen in artists from George Kuchar to Andy Warhol; performances in his New York loft, more fugitive and underground even than his film production, were forebears to the avant-garde theater of Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson and others. Among classics of New American Cinema, Flaming Creatures was the most maudit, and the most frequently seized for obscenity. The setting for this pre-Cockettes fantasy of sexual confusion is a transvestite orgy where Smith's "creatures" go in for the kind of role playing and exhibitionism that made him the (il)legitimate daddy of camp. Tonight's print and an internegative were made by the Film Society of Lincoln Center from the only known complete print of Flaming Creatures. Proceeds from our screening will go toward making distribution prints. Smith's flamboyant aesthetic also found expression in photography, collage, painting, furniture, costume and set design. UAM/PFA and the P.S. 1 Museum will present the first museum exhibition of Jack Smith's work during Fall of 1992.