Shot on 16mm army-surplus Kodak film with a budget of just $300, Jack Smith’s 1963 experimental film, Flaming Creatures, follows a group of transsexuals and drag performers through melodramatic and loosely connected vignettes.
Flaming Creatures’ pervasive use of eroticism got the film into battles over censorship internationally—as well as legal troubles across the U.S. Following its premiere in 1963, Flaming Creatures was regularly rejected from public screenings due to its sexual content.
In 1964, Flaming Creatures was programmed at the New Bowery Theater in New York. But the NYPD arrested the programmers on charges of showing an obscene film. The police seized the film reels and projection equipment and banned future screenings.
Flaming Creatures was banned in 22 U.S. states and four countries. And the changing dynamics in America during the sexual revolution and toward the end of the Hays Code gave way for the film to be noticed by Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Smith would never complete another film after Flaming Creatures. Instead, he would edit films in front of an audience while they were being projected as a form of performance art. After Smith’s death in 1989, film critic J. Hoberman and performance artist Penny Arcade had a restoration of Flaming Creatures made so that its legacy could live on.
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