Flaming Creatures (1963) on 16mm

About Flaming Creatures (1963) on 16mm

The Cinema Museum is proud to present a series of avant-garde film screenings on 16mm in association with Inside Out, in benefit of the Museum’s fundraiser to buy our home.

Our second screening of the season is the infamous Flaming Creatures (1963), directed by Jack Smith. Running time: 50 mins.

A classic of queer, underground and experimental cinema at once, Flaming Creatures follows an ensemble of drag performers vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for a heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake.
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After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

Because of the film’s sexual content, some venues refused to show Flaming Creatures, and in March 1964, police interrupted a screening and seized a print of the film. The screening’s organisers (Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, and Florence Karpf) were prosecuted, and the film was ruled to be in violation of New York’s obscenity laws. Mekas and critic Susan Sontag mounted a critical defence of Flaming Creatures, and it became a cause célèbre for the New American Cinema movement.

The Cinema Museum is proud to present a rare screening of this avant-garde film classic in its original format. All proceeds go towards The Cinema Museum’s fundraiser to buy our long-term home.