Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith

Jan 26, 2017

1h 28m

★ 0.0

Overview

In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith’s life than with his work, analyzing Smith’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

Genres

Documentary

Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith Trailers

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Cast

Himself (archive footage)

Jack Smith

Himself (archive footage)

Mario Montez

Herself (archive footage)

Beverly Grant

Himself (archive footage)

Tony Conrad

Himself (archive footage)

Agosto Machado

Himself (archive footage)

Francis Francine

Himself (archive footage)

Irving Rosenthal

Herself (archive footage)

Tally Brown

Herself (archive footage)

Mary Waronor

Himself (archive footage)

Tiny Tim

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

0.0

Chance, History, Art...

Aug 25, 1980

Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.

1.0

Raja Bro

Dec 17, 2022

A sensitive heart-warming story of an Indian transman's acceptance, by himself and his family. Merlin, born as a girl, felt right from his childhood that he was trapped in the wrong gender.

8.0

Xenoi

Oct 11, 2016

The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to human conditions.

0.0

Age 12: Love with a Little L

Jul 12, 1991

This film is depicts early lesbian sexuality, using reenacted scenes from the experience of a 12-year old girl as the platform for a meditation on forbidden desire, transgression, and Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of identity formation. Raw adolescent memories counterpoint staged scenes, exploring mechanisms of power and submission.

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0.0

Adrift

Jan 1, 2004

"Adrift" is shot on the arctic island of Spitzbergen and in Norway. It combines time-lapse photography with stop-motion animation of the landscape. Through camera-angles and framing the film gradually dislocates the viewer from a stable base where one loses the sense of scale and grounding.

0.0

Transitions

May 2, 1986

A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.

0.0

Connection | Isolation

Oct 13, 2024

Connection | Isolation presents eight intimate portraits of trans and post-gender individuals navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst moments of connection and isolation, these participants reveal a deepening awareness of gender, their bodies, and trans community. Created by an all trans and queer crew, this hybrid documentary film interlaces portraits with reenactments, integrating archival material documenting what so many experienced and many still do.

9.0

We've Been Around

Mar 1, 2016

In this documentary, director Rhys Ernst tells the previously untold histories of transgender pioneers. Trans people have always been here, throughout time, often hidden in plain sight.

5.3

The Song of Italy

Dec 31, 1967

Filmed during Jonas Mekas’s travels through Italy in 1967, this short captures scenes from the country’s cities and countryside. The footage was later included in his 2003 compilation film Travel Songs (1967–1981).

0.0

Ganga

Jan 1, 1985

The second entry in Velu Viswanadhan's series of experimental documentaries. This film traces the Ganges river upstream.

0.0

Midwinter Hue

Dec 12, 2017

A man steadily bashes through the snow. He disappears and the trees, covered in white, shift and show a beautiful array of hidden colors. A poetic, meditative short film about letting go of the past and embracing the unknown future.

6.4

Atlantis

Oct 19, 2014

A documentary portrait of Utopia, loosely framed by Plato’s invocation of the lost continent of Atlantis in 360 BC and its re-resurrection via a 1970s science fiction pulp novel.

0.0

Pollinator

Nov 23, 2023

The artist walks through a garden, with additional footage featuring Black trans activist Marsha P. Johnson.

4.5

Kata

Dec 31, 1967

Nature, gymnastic movements, a cat...

5.0

Vineyard IV

Jan 2, 1967

Glen Denny observed: "This film is not ocean, it is panther stalking jungle." Camera flows because it is free to move through space.

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0.0

Convalescing

Aug 27, 2000

“Convalescing, when you don't have to participate in the world. Time to read, to dream, to look - the blue, the light of the television, the blue, the book, the patterns the light, the blue. Time to appreciate how much that really is.”

0.0

City Streaming

Jan 1, 1990

This is a film made in Toronto, in memoriam, so to speak - a memory piece, a "piecing-together" of the experience of living there. The consciousness of the maker comes to sharply focused visual music - not to arrive at snapshots, as such, but rather to "sing" the city as remembered from daily living...complementary, then, to an earlier film, "Unconscious London Strata." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

0.0

Flight

Jan 1, 1974

Pun on "light" intended - that short preceding expulsion of breath perhaps the "subject matter" of this film which centers in consideration of death. It is the third tone poem film and did much surprise me by thus completing a trilogy of the "4 classical Elements." (SB)

0.0

Leftovers

May 23, 2017

A manufactured memory.