Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground

Barbara Rubin was a hyperactive spider in the web of the New York art scene in the late 1960s. She was friends with Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, and introduced the latter to the Velvet Underground. Once lauded as the Joan of Arc of the underground because of her unique film Christmas on Earth (“a study in genital variations and psychic tumult”), this energetic muse later disappeared from the annals of the artistic avant-garde. To great consternation among her artistic friends, Rubin suddenly converted to Orthodox Judaism, aiming to become the first female rabbi. At the same time, she wrote to Walt Disney to help support her next project.

The film is a goldmine of well-known faces and contains a lot of footage from the archive of Jonas Mekas, the ‘godfather’ of American avant-garde cinema. Chuck Smith does not try to imitate his subject stylistically. His straightforward approach makes this bizarre biography even more intriguing.