FLAMING CREATURES

Monday, September 11, 8:30 p.m. | Promptly after the premiere of FLAMING CREATURES—Smith’s orgiastic, messy tangle of bodies, lipstick, and vampires—at the Bleeker Street Cinema in New York City, police arrived at the theater and seized the print, and the film was banned across the country and internationally. Filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who was charged with violating New York’s obscenity laws for screening the film in 1964, wrote in Film Comment of his arrest, “It is my duty as an artist and as a man to show the best work of my contemporaries to the people. It is my duty to bring to your attention the ridiculousness and illegality of the licensing and obscenity laws. The duty of the artist is to ignore bad laws and fight them every moment of his life. All works of art, all expressions of man’s spirit must be permitted, must be available to the people. In what times do we live, when works of art are identified with the workings of crime? What a beautiful insanity!”

Contra/Banned Series: As a disturbing wave of bans—on books, on bodies, on identities—continues to sweep across the United States, the Film Center declares: get your censorship off our cinema. With Contra/Banned, we present 10 films that have experienced, in varying absurd degrees, their own bans and outcries, their own protests and regulations. The films of Contra/Banned are at times subversive, controversial, taboo, provocative, and shocking. Sounds like a good time at the movies to us. View full series.

The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu