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252.
The Film-Makers' Cinematheque in association with Jack Smith and Angus Maclise Presents… Horror and Fantasy at Midnight. NY: New Cinema Playhouse, 1967 + TLS from Ira Cohen.
Original b/w flyer designed by Jack Smith announcing a programme of films (“clips from the subterranean film chambers of Dr. Madman!”), including “Reefers of Technicolor Island”, “Scrubwoman of Atlantis” (both “in Livid Color!!”), “Rat Droppings of Uranus”, “Marshgas of Flatulandia”, “The Flake of Soot”, and “Overstimulated”. 27x21.4cm.
Smith’s presentation, accompanied by a taped soundtrack from Angus MacLise’s Cineola Orchestra, showed clips from completed and uncompleted films, most of them mixing original material with found footage. It was extended for a second run at the same venue on November 16 and 21, and again at Aldo Tambellini’s Black Gate theatre in January 1968 for a further five-day run.
Autograph letter SIGNED in pencil to verso from Ira Cohen to Bill Levy (the editor of International Times), dated November 9: “Tonight we’re going to Dr. Madman’s Horror & Fantasy at Midnight. Thought you might dig the program.” 108 words. Embellished with multiple rubber stamps in red ink by Cohen.
The letter goes on to mention Trigram Press co-founder Asa Benveniste (“decided to send him GS & Growing Hand & Gnaoua & Cookbook”) and Larry Wallrich “on Nether Street [north London]… Is he the same guy who had Phoenix Bookshop?” [Wallrich founded the Phoenix Bookshop in Greenwich Village in the 1950s]). Folded in three, together with the original hand-addressed mailing envelope with Cohen’s Trance stamp added in red ink.
Together with: two autograph letters signed from Ira Cohen in New York to Bill Levy in London. The first (2pp., with hand-addressed mailing envelope) postmarked August 22, 1967, and the second (aérogramme) dated October 29, 1967. 670 words + 327 words. Both include mentions of Jack Smith and his films.
i) The first letter (its first few lines typewritten) opens: “Sounds like you are very busy running IT etc. Could you please send the copy which ran Rosalind’s drawing [IT #16]. We wld appreciate it very much. I wonder what reaction you had to the record [Jilala] or Great Society or Growing Hand. If you were interested it wld be nice to get an intelligent review - since here that’s impossible unless you open up a psychedelic shop or run for President in the nude on a banana ticket [a reference to the great banana-smoking hoax]. Later he writes (now in blue ink holograph): “I just got a letter from someone named Mike Lesser who claims to be a friend of yrs & to have ¼ of a shop called TIME OUT OF MIND [probably The Badge Boutique]. He wants to reprint The Cookbook in London, demands English & European rights & in general wrote a fairly unpleasant letter.” The letter’s second sheet begins: “Now all my brains (swiss cheese?) are turned to film & I am working with several really good people on a science fiction HORROR epic to be filmed in CYSTOSCOPE. Jack Smith will star as The Hunchback of Grand Street... Anyway Film just starting & we have hundreds of really great still shots in color - only 3 minutes of actual film, but it WILL GO DOWN!!!”. At this section a single colour frame from a strip of 16mm. film has been stapled to the right edge, captioned in black holograph ink: “Here I am as DR LEON NEON”. Cohen continues: “Saw Sheldon (Rochlin’s) rushes from London [a reference to the film, “Dope”]. He may shoot this film w/Jack & me & Ros [Schwartz] & various dwarfs humpbacks & albino cretins who work as lab assts, heh heh heh.” The letter ends with brief mentions of Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, Cohen’s plans for “the GREAT TRIP” (to Machupicchu, Benares, Angkor Wat, Rio etc.), and closes: “Peter [Birnbaum, who appeared in Cohen’s 1968 film, The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda] sends regards, Love Ira”.
ii) Much of the aérogramme letter, written two months later, is concerned with the films of Jack Smith and their availability or otherwise: “Jack’s NORMAL LOVE is not available. Jack has never even given Cinematheque or Coop a print. Technically it is UNFINISHED - Tho I have seen many sections which are EXQUISITE!!! The other films I was told by [filmmaker] Louis BRIGANTE here are available thru Co-op Filmmakers - write to him - I don’t know prices, but they want to know who wants it, for what purpose etc etc to protect filmmakers… Jack has other films, has been repeatedly perturbed by gossip that a pirated print of FLAMING CREATURES is shown around in LONDON. He gets nothing from it & is afraid ‘they’ show it in some fucked up way w/out proper soundtrack, for example. You might if you contact BRIGANTE here, ask abt other possibilities on Jack. Besides Creatures, he is just finishing off whole chunks of film, any sequence of which wld be an addition to any film collection. He just made short film Secrets of Marijuana Island only few minutes & all impressionistic of plants & Panama R. in sarong & Hakim Khan in shipwrecked Capt. Garb. Also great card game scrub woman sequence of Borrowed Tambourine COLOR * COLOR * COLOR” [both films were screened two weeks later at the ‘Horror and Fantasy at Midnight’ event announced in the flyer]. A postscript adds: “There is a copy of CHUMLUM in Europe w/P. Adams Sitney, if you can find him. What more? xxxx Ira”. Stamped multiple times with a red star graphic and postmarked New York, October 31, 1967.
(3 items).
Price:
£550.00
