Mary Jordan's documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is part unsparing explication of a life story, part love-stuck personification of Smith's working philosophy.
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2007)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 15
Rotten:3
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Theatrical Release:Apr 11, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: Jack Smith was a legendary figure on the New York avant garde art scene, and his FLAMING CREATURES is rightly hailed as a masterpiece in its field. This documentary gives an overview of Smith's... Jack Smith was a legendary figure on the New York avant garde art scene, and his FLAMING CREATURES is rightly hailed as a masterpiece in its field. This documentary gives an overview of Smith's incredible career. [More]
Starring: John Waters, Ken Jacobs, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas
Starring: John Waters, Ken Jacobs, Judith Malina, Jonas Mekas, Maria Montez, Andrew Sarris
Director: Mary Jordan
Director: Mary Jordan
Screenwriter: Mary Jordan
Producer: Mary Jordan
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Reviews for Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
It's the only place you'll find clips of his notorious masterpiece Flaming Creatures (1963), and for that alone it's worth seeing.
Jordan’s film is a glorious visual achievement in its own right, as well as part of the rancorous ongoing dispute over Smith’s legacy.
If modern art-lovers want to understand what the Jack Smith experience was like, Jordan's documentary may be their best chance.
This invaluable record contains a treasure trove of clips from Smith's hard-to-see and still striking films, plus comments that were culled from hours of interviews with this flamboyant pioneer.
There is invaluable material here, but also a lack of context for the wonderfully outre footage.
Alternately bizarre and inspired, but an appropriate tribute to an uncompromisingly experimental innovator in the field of cinema.
An intriguing, and profoundly frustrating, view of the New York underground hero.
The intoxicating documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, directed by Mary Jordan, is a love poem to the New York City of the '50s and '60s, when Smith, the visionary of camp, more or less invented performance art.
Thank heavens for Mary Jordan's vibrant, funny and tragic documentary, an entertaining hodgepodge of artifacts and impressions of a "creature" whose influence on photography, drama, film and art is still felt today.
It's gratifying when an influential underground artist is profiled in an accessible documentary. For that reason alone, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis is worth seeing.
In some ways Smith's art became commodified only after he died and his estranged sister gained control over his work, though that did lead to this documentary, a fascinating introduction to his special world.
Helmer Mary Jordan does an extraordinary job sorting through extensive material and gathering a who's who of collaborators and disciples, offering an insightful and incisive portrait of a self-destructive paranoid artist.
Smith's own work, here montaged for easy digestion, is already too rich and sumptuous to require any further frosting.
In Jordan’s documentary you see the roots of camp as distinctly melancholy and yearning, a world of the spirit that can never be made flesh.
The film tries a little too fastidiously to piece together a life its owner tried quite brazenly to shatter.
Latest News for Jack Smith and the Destruction of...
August 28, 2008:
Bio-pic revisits checkered cinematic career of unrecognized genius. ![]()
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April 12, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Hoax" Shines; Force Is With "ATHF"; "Disturbia" Mixed; "Pathfinder," "Stranger" Not Perfect; "Redline," Slow Burn" Not Screened
This week at the movies, we've got snoops ("Disturbia," starring Shia LaBeouf), temps ("Perfect Stranger," starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis), Mooninites... More...
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