The Making and Unmaking of Flaming Creatures (Event Over)

The Making and Unmaking of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures

A Screening and Talk with J. Hoberman

Los Angeles revival

1963, 45 min., 16mm, b/w

Recognized as an unprecedented visionary masterpiece, Flaming Creatures was also reviled, rioted over, banned as porn, and pondered by the Supreme Court. “Jack Smith described Flaming Creatures as ‘a comedy set in a haunted movie studio.’ It is that, as well as the single most important and influential underground movie ever released in America,” according to J. Hoberman, film critic of

The Village Voice for more than 30 years and an authority on the Smith performance and film oeuvre. “Smith’s movie was a source of inspiration for artists as disparate as Andy Warhol, Federico Fellini and John Waters but he never completed another.” Find out why. Hoberman’s books include The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties and Bridge of Light: Yiddish Cinema Between Two Worlds.

In person: J. Hoberman

Curated by Steve Anker.

Jack H. Skirball Series