Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2006)
This film is a documentary about Jack Smith. Who's that you ask? Jack Smith was a avant-garde filmmaker from the 60s, an eccentric gay stringently non-commercialized entity that in many ways inspired the zeitgeist of the underground film scene of the era. He took his set pieces and costumes from garbage cans, had his film banned for nudity and depravity (apparently Flaming Creatures is still banned from playing in New York, or at least until very recently), and took his own inspiration from campy Universal pictures from the 40s featuring Maria Montez. After Flaming Creatures, he decided he would never truly finish another film (and risk having it change and become distorted through the commercialization of the industry) and instead would edit and re-edit his film as the screening, blurring the lines between performance and film. More fun tid-bits about his fascinating, purist lunatic: lived off of cheese and water (at a point when he could have cashed in easily on his films), became Andy Warhol's main inspiration (and lent to many of Warhol's "most important ideas"), and purposely contracted AIDS because he thought it would be a marvelous way to die. Weird guy, good artist, interesting documentary.
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