Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs, U.S., 1959-63). Featuring Jack Smith, "It's a look in on an exploding life....Silly, self-pitying, guilt-strictured and yet triumphing-on one level-over the situation with style, because (Jack Smith is) unapologetically gifted, has a genius for courage, knows that a state of indignity can serve to show his character in sharpest relief."-Ken Jacobs (Images gathered by Bob Fleischner, sound-film composed by Ken Jacobs, 30 mins, With live radio, B!W/Color, 16mm, PFA Collection) Plus a rare opportunity to listen to an excerpt from "Free Association Interview with Jack Smith" (by David Brooks, April 23, 1964, c. 15 mins, Audio cassette from Anthology Film Archives). Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, U.S., 1963) Jack 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, even more fugitive and underground than his film production, were forebears to the avant-garde theater. 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. (45 mins, B!W, 16mm, From Canyon)