Sinbad of Baghdad
Jack Smith, USA, 1978, Super8 transferred to video, 29 min. US Premiere
Sinbad of Baghdad was filmed long after Jack had given up the idea of completing Normal Love. Sometime in the mid to late 1970s he brought a troupe of performers to the sands of the Sahara at Coney Island. There amid the faux dunes, cigarette butts, and beach trash, a procession of creatures, each with a glitter-clad phallus, makes camp on the strand. There is a dance, and some posing done with advertising for Preparation H. Jack brushes his facial hair. He seems to have edited the film in camera, and labeled each S8 film box in the order in which it is to be shown. The restored DV version is an assembly of the reels in the order that he indicated. Almost a decade ago, a single reel from this assembly was screened in Big As Life: An American History
of 8mm Films. The audio track is assembled from his record collection, with digital transfer and mix by Sean Kirk and Jerry Tartaglia. The Super 8 preservation was accomplished through the generosity of the Alf Bold Fund at the Friends of the German Cinema (FDK), Berlin.
EXTRA BONUS: 30 minutes of Jack Smith’s
super-8 footage, never before seen by the public!
Jack Smith
Cited as an influence by the likes of Laurie Anderson and John Waters, filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith was a pioneer of camp aesthetics. His 1963 film Flaming Creatures, banned on its release, has become an underground classic. Since his AIDS-related death in 1989, Jack’s oeuvre has been lovingly preserved and restored by dowtown performance artist Penny Arcade, Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman, and Jerry Tartaglia, who presents tonight’s screening.
Jerry Tartaglia
Jerry Tartaglia is an experimental filmmaker and writer whose works on gay identity and queer history span four decades. He has made over thirty films, including A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M., Ecce Homo, and Amnesia, and has screened his work around the world at film festivals, museums, and other showcases for non-commercial cinema. For the last fifteen years, he has restored and preserved the work of the late Jack Smith. He teaches cinema and writing at Albright College in Pennsylvania.
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