A legendary New York figure, Harry Smith was a film-maker, animator, painter, folklorist and modern alchemist. Starting in the late 1940s, Smith created a visionary and ground-breaking series of animated films of great diversity, from the astonishingly inventive hand-painted Early Abstractions, (created apparently on a diet of be-bop jazz, grass, pills and alcohol) to his magnum opus, Heaven and Earth Magic, a collage masterpiece in the true surrealist spirit of Max Ernst with its strange alchemical and erotic machinery and dancing magus.
Presented by a close collaborator of Smith, M. Henry Jones, this will be the international premiere of the special multi-screen presentation of Smith’s work using magic lanterns and other custom-made devices to recreate the show originally envisioned by Smith himself.
