Jack Smith (film director)

In 2017, Jerry Tartaglia directed a documentary called Escape from Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith which is a film essay concerning the works of Jack Smith, aimed at the artist's most devoted followers.

In 2009, Germany's Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art [de] staged Five Flaming Days in a Rented World, a festival and conference on Smith's work. The event included several commissioned short films in tribute to Smith's films, the most noted of which was Guy Maddin's The Little White Cloud That Cried.

By October 2006, the foundation still refused to surrender Smith's archive to the estate, claiming money owed them for expenses associated with managing the archive—and hoping Smith's work would be bought by an appropriate public institution that could safeguard his legacy and keep the works in the public eye. According to curator Jerry Tartaglia, the dispute was resolved as of 2008, with the purchase of Smith's estate by the Gladstone Gallery.

In January 2004, the New York Surrogate Court ordered Hoberman and Arcade to return Smith's archive to his legal heir, estranged, surviving sister Sue Slater. Hoberman and Arcade fought to dismiss Slater's claim, arguing that she abandoned Jack's apartment and its contents; the Plaster Foundation created the archive and took possession of the work only after 14 years of repeated, documented attempts at communication with her. In a six-minute trial, Judge Eve Preminger rejected the Foundation's argument and awarded the archive to Slater.

In 1992, performer Ron Vawter recreated Smith's performance "What's Underground about Marshmallows" in Roy Cohn/Jack Smith which he presented in a live performance and which was later released as a film directed by Jill Godmilow and produced by Jonathan Demme.

After his last film, No President (1967), Smith created performance and experimental theatre work until his death on September 25, 1989, from AIDS-related pneumonia.

In 1989, New York performance artist Penny Arcade tried to salvage Smith's work from his apartment after his long bout with AIDS and subsequent death. Arcade attempted to preserve the apartment as Smith had transformed it – an elaborate stage set for his never-to-be-filmed epic Sinbad in a Rented World – as a museum dedicated to Jack Smith and his work. This effort failed.

In 1987, Smith was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) degree from Whittier College.

In 1978, Sylvère Lotringer conducted a 13-page interview with Smith (with photos) in Columbia University's philosophy department publication of Semiotext(e). It was collected in 2013 in Schizo-Culture: The Event, The Book. In 2014, it was released as a limited-ledition vinyl picture disc by Semiotext(e).

Smith was one of the first proponents of the aesthetics which came to be known as 'camp' and 'trash', using no-budget means of production (e.g. using discarded color reversal film stock) to create a visual cosmos heavily influenced by Hollywood kitsch, orientalism and with Flaming Creatures created drag culture as it is currently known. Smith was heavily involved with John Vaccaro, founder of The Playhouse of the Ridiculous, whose disregard for conventional theater practice deeply influenced Smith's ideas about performance art. In turn, Vaccaro was deeply influenced by Smith's aesthetics. It was Vaccaro who introduced Smith to glitter and in 1966 and 1967, Smith created costumes for Vaccaro's Playhouse of The Ridiculous. Smith's style influenced the film work of Andy Warhol as well as the early work of John Waters. While all three were part of the 1960s gay arts movement, Vaccaro and Smith refuted the idea that their sexual orientation was responsible for their art.

The most famous of Smith's productions is Flaming Creatures (1963). The film is a satire of Hollywood B movies and tribute to actress Maria Montez, who starred in many such productions. However, authorities considered some scenes to be pornographic. Copies of the movie were confiscated at the premiere, and it was subsequently banned (technically, it still is to this day). Despite not being viewable, the movie gained some notoriety when footage was screened during Congressional hearings and right-wing politician Strom Thurmond mentioned it in anti-porn speeches.

He also worked as a photographer and founded the Hyperbole Photographic Studio in New York. In 1962, he released The Beautiful Book, a collection of pictures of New York artists, that was re-published in facsimile by Granary Books in 2001.

Tony Conrad produced two CDs from the Jack Smith tape archives subtitled 56 Ludlow Street that were recorded at 56 Ludlow Street between 1962 and 1964.

Smith was raised in Texas, where he made his first film, Buzzards over Baghdad, in 1952. He moved to New York in 1953.

Jack Smith (November 14, 1932 – September 18, 1989) was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema. He is generally acclaimed as a founding father of American performance art, and has been critically recognized as a master photographer, though his photographic works are rare and remain largely unknown.