Harry Smith’s Early Abstractions will be showing as one of the films for the event “JAZZ/BEAT/IMPROVISATION,” Pompidou screening series for the ongoing exhibit “Beat Generation. ”

The Beat Generation and jazz music are inextricably linked. In the 1950s, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs would go see Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, in fact in 1960 Allen Ginsberg met Harry Smith at The Five Spot where Smith would go nightly to see Thelonious Monk.

Films: Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, 1959; Ernest Pintoff, The Interview of Shorty Petterstein, 1960; Harry Smith, Early Abstractions, 1939-56; Jordan Belson, Bop Scotch, 1952; Hy Hirsh, Scratch pad, 1960; Larry Jordan, Portrait of Sharon, 1963; Shirley Clark, Bridge-Go-Round, 1958; Stan Vanderbeek, Poem Field #2, 1962; Bruce Baillie, All my Life, 1966