The Light and Sound Machine gets playful and political with Thursday’s double feature of films by Jack Smith. There was a time when Smith’s Flaming Creatures was the most feared film in the country. This (literal and figurative) orgy of drag, debauchery and dangly dick sowed scandal wherever it played, with the organizers of its 1963 premiere arrested and charged with obscenity, followed by legal battles across the U.S. and internationally. It’s a murky dive into a sea of heaving bosom, genderfuck and licentious abandon, and it feels almost quaint now. Almost. Because there’s nothing that scares the patriarchy like queer liberation, and even today this joyful, deliberate romp strikes fear in the hearts of legislators trying to chip away at every kind of sexual equality. It is of a piece with Kuchar and Anger and Waters, but Smith did it first. Never one to believe in final versions, Smith would re-edit his work often, and the second section of the program, the Tiny Tim-starring Yellow Sequence, is culled from his feature-length epic Normal Love. In addition, to prep viewers for Monday’s grand eclipse, there will be a selection of shorts dealing with the cosmos and heliocentricity, so the evening’s program is going to span all aspects of the human experience. JASON SHAWHAN
The Light and Sound Machine: Eclipse Cinema — Yellow Sequence & Flaming Creatures
