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Newly Restored, Boldly Colorful Harry Smith Films At I-House

  • Lightbox @ International House 3701 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Harry Everett Smith experimental animations on Magick 1.

How’s this for an enviable first sentence of a Wikipedia entry:

Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923 in Portland, Oregon – November 27, 1991 in New York City) was a visual artist, experimental filmmaker, record collector, bohemianmystic, and largely self-taught student of anthropology.

That’s cramming a lot of hey-what-now into a small amount of space, which the world tends to do to even the most important and influential among us. And so the world largely has been remembering Smith as a folklorist since his death, on account of Anthology Of American Folk Music, a document so important that one could argue that the ‘60s wouldn’t/couldn’t have happened the way they did without it. But recently, Smith has been getting his due, largely overdue, as a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker, thanks to a restoration project by Anthology Film Archives. This screening, featuring newly restored Smith films, also coincides with the twin publications of Paper Airplanes: The Collections of Harry Smith, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2 and String Figures: The Collections of Harry Smith, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, both of which expand upon Smith’s status as artistic and curatorial polymath.

Tickets available here.