In Performance: LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! (Berlin, Germany)

LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH!
Five Flaming Days in a Rented World

New Films and Performances
Over 50 International Guests
Superstar Mario Montez Live

[singlepic id=193 w= h= float=left]From October 28- November 1 2009 Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU) Theater present “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World”, a monumental event that brings together over fifty international artists and scholars to pay homage to the pioneering American underground artist and queer icon Jack Smith twenty years after his death from AIDS.

Through performances, film and video screenings, installations, concerts, lectures and discussions, LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! not only offers a variety of perspectives on the gender and genre bending work of Smith, Andy Warhol and fellow ’60s avant-gardists, but also situates this work in dialogue with that of a diverse group of international contemporary artists.

LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! participants were invited to Berlin in March 2009 for private screenings of the restored copies of Smith’s films that were placed in the Arsenal film archive by film restorer Jerry Tartaglia of the Plaster Foundation, the organization founded by performance artist Penny Arcade and critic/scholar Jim Hoberman to save and archive Smith’s work after his death. Following extensive discussions about Smith’s work and the context of its production, participants have had almost six months to prepare new work for the public festival.

Special festival guest is the legendary underground Superstar Mario Montez who will be making his first live appearance in over thirty years! With a special star-studded production of Warhol screenwriter Ronald Tavel’s play “The Life of Juanita Castro”, LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! will also pay homage to Tavel, who was Smith and Montez’s close collaborator and who died unexpectedly after the March screening weekend.

Participants include: Bini Adamczak, Callie Angell, Penny Arcade, Tim Blue, Pauline Boudry, Nao Bustamante, Christophe Chemin, Eric D. Clark, Tony Conrad, Beatrice Cordua, Douglas Crimp, Martin Dannecker, Vaginal Davis, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jennifer Doyle, Rainald Goetz, Ulrich Gooß, Karola Gramann, Chloe Griffin, Herbert Gschwind, Birgit Hein, Wilhelm Hein, John Edward Heys, Werner Hirsch, Jim Hoberman, Oliver Husain, Ken Jacobs (live Skype appearance), Dominic Johnson, Kinky Justice, Andrew Kerton, Sean Michael Kirk, Jakob Lena Knebl, Michael Krebber, Bruce LaBruce, Deirdre Logue, Renate Lorenz, Marie Losier, Guy Maddin, Thomas Meinecke, José Muñoz, Ulrike Ottinger, Uzi Parnes, Kristian Petersen, Phantom/Ghost, Gwenäel Rattke, Juliane Rebentisch, Evelyn Rüsseler, Hans Scheirl, Heide Schlüpmann, Katharina Sieverding, Isabell Spengler, Tim Stüttgen, Juan Suárez, Jerry Tartaglia, Amy Taubin, Chris Tedjasukmana, José Teunissen, Ela Troyano, Gordon W. and Klaus Walter.

Curated by Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus. “LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World” is a co-production by Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel-am-Ufer (HAU) Theater, funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

October 28, – November 1, 2009
Kino Arsenal / HAU 1
Potsdamer Str. 2 / Stresemannstr. 29
Berlin, Germany