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2011

  • Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area

    Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area

    09/17/2010 - 03/31/2011

    In celebration of the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-2000 the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque present a landmark exhibition of experimental film and video.

    Details >

  • Abstract Expressionism and Film

    Abstract Expressionism and Film

    02/13/2011 - 04/23/2011

    Location: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

    Short Description: MOMA presents six programs of films inspired by the New York School in conjunction with the Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition.

    Details >

  • Special Issue of Bombay Gin

    Special Issue of Bombay Gin

    03/01/2011

    The Naropa Press’ journal Bombay Gin devotes a special issue to the Anthology of American Folk Music.

    Details >

  • Victoria Cafe designated as Historic Site

    Victoria Cafe designated as Historic Site

    04/01/2011

    Location: Elk Cree Café, Millheim, PA

    For the first time a building has been designated as historic because of its connection to the Anthology of American Folk Music.

    Details >

  • New Directions in Animation: Harry Smith and Storm de Hirsch

    New Directions in Animation: Harry Smith and Storm de Hirsch

    04/25/2011

    Location: Columbia City Theater, Seattle, WA

    The University of Chicago presents an evening of avant-garde films from the 1960s including Heaven and Earth Magic, Peyote Queen and Third Eye Butterfly.

    Details >

  • Harry Smith, Unpublished Footage

    Harry Smith, Unpublished Footage

    05/25/2011

    Location: Roy O Disney Theater, CalArts, Valencia, CA

    The Pompidou center hosts a screening of Early Abstractions accompanied by rare footage.

    Details >

  • Harry Smith Program

    Harry Smith Program

    05/26/2011

    Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York

    Anthology Film Archives presents an evening of films by Harry Smith, including Early Abstractions, Mirror Animations, Late Superimpositions and Oz, The Tin Woodman’s Dream.

    Details >

  • Harry Smith: 'The Paracelsus of the Chelsea Hotel'

    Harry Smith: 'The Paracelsus of the Chelsea Hotel'

    05/28/2011

    Mara Goldwyn contributes the essay “Harry Smith: ‘The Paracelsus of the Chelsea Hotel” to Network Awesome.

    Details >

  • The Unfinished Film

    The Unfinished Film

    06/24/2011 - 07/29/2011

    Location: Saint Paul, MN

    Curated by Thomas Beard, The Unfinished Film includes works by Harry Smith, Ken Jacobs, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

    Details >

  • Watch Me Move: The Animation Show

    Watch Me Move: The Animation Show

    07/28/2011

    Location: Max Palevsky Cinema, University of Chicago

    The Barbican Art Gallery includes Heaven and Earth Magic in its exhibition Watch Me Move: The Animation Show.

    Details >

  • Visions: Animation and Abstraction

    Visions: Animation and Abstraction

    08/10/2011

    Location: Pompidou Center, Paris France

    The Northwest Film Forum, Sprocket Society and Third Eye Cinema present Visions: Animation and Abstraction, 1908 to 1994 a series of experimental animation masterworks.

    Details >

  • Silent Film Night: Heaven and Earth Magic

    Silent Film Night: Heaven and Earth Magic

    08/18/2011

    Location: Anthology Film Archives, New York

    APK Live presents a screening of Heaven and Earth Magic with live musical accompaniment by Ian Doig Phaneuf (A Person Disguised as People), Patrick Cahill (The riderless) and Jeremy Ive (A Priori, Exit 2012).

    Details >

  • The Old Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music

    The Old Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music

    10/07/2011 - 10/16/2011

    Location: The Gladstone Gallery, New York

    The Warsaw Film Festivals presents Rani Singh’s documentary The Old Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.

    Details >

  • Visionary Animation

    Visionary Animation

    11/01/2011

    Location: Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK

    The BFI presents Visionary Animation, a series of films by influential American experimental animators.

    Details >

  • 4th Annual Harry Smith Festival

    4th Annual Harry Smith Festival

    11/06/2011

    Location: Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, Washington

    Elk Creek Café and Ale Works and Chicken Tractor Deluxe host the 4th Annual Harry Smith Festival with bands performing music from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Proceeds will benefit the Penns Valley Hope Fund.

    Details >

  • Filmmaker's Cooperative Benefit Concert

    Filmmaker's Cooperative Benefit Concert

    11/16/2011

    Location: APK Live, London, Ontario

    The Filmmaker’s Cooperative hosts a benefit featuring live musical performances by Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson and a screening of films by Harry Smith, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs and others.

    Details >

  • A Tribute to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music

    A Tribute to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music

    11/25/2011

    Location: Warsaw Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland

    American Standard Time, Ball of Wax and the Seattle Folk Festival present “A Tribute to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.”

    Details >

  • Anthology of American Folk Music inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame

    Anthology of American Folk Music inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame

    12/01/2011

    Anthology of American Folk Music inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame.

    Details >

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    Harry Smith Archives Follow

    Official account for the archives of Harry Everett Smith - filmmaker, musicologist, mystic, & one of the least understood figures in postwar American culture

    HS_Archives
    hs_archives Harry Smith Archives @hs_archives ·
    3 Feb

    Thanks to the wonderful @currincy & the @librarycongress, we now know that Harry’s Anthology was one of the first records purchased for the White House Record Library! More shocking perhaps is the implication that Smith & Nixon might’ve shared common ground 😂

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    hs_archives Harry Smith Archives @hs_archives ·
    1 Feb

    We love to see it

    grayson haver currin (doesn't tweet much at all) @currincy

    I've heard for years that the Nixon White House had a copy of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Thanks to the Library of Congress for doing the digging to confirm it, maybe for the first time? @HS_Archives @Folkways

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    hs_archives Harry Smith Archives @hs_archives ·
    23 Jan

    Great news! We are thrilled to announce that the upcoming Harry Smith Exhibition at the @whitneymuseum has received a generous grant from the @warholfdn ! Stay tuned for more details about the opening this fall!🥫🥫🥫

    Photo courtesy Getty Images

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    myownsidekick Gail Sims @myownsidekick ·
    17 Jan

    He made this the same year I was born. https://twitter.com/HS_Archives/status/1517599072592424966

    Harry Smith Archives @HS_Archives

    Film #10, the final selection in Smith's first films that were compiled and came to be called Early Abstractions, was recut in 1957 to create Film #11, aka Mirror Animations. (1/3)

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    kramermj Michael J. Kramer @kramermj ·
    20 Jan

    One of my favorite parts of the @HS_Archives at @GettyMuseum are Harry Smith's stationery border works. Why? Harry Smith's border art is important, because all his art is border art! Pages and pages of psychedelic rectangles of margin-defining edginess. #harrysmith

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    Thanks to the wonderful @currincy and the Library Thanks to the wonderful @currincy and the Library of Congress, we now know that Harry’s Anthology of American Folk Music was one of the first records purchased for the White House Record Library in 1973! More shocking perhaps is the implication that Smith & Richard Nixon might’ve shared common ground 😂
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#harrysmitharchives 
#harryeverettsmith 
#anthologyofamericanfolkmusic 
#richardnixon
    Great news! We are thrilled to announce that the u Great news! We are thrilled to announce that the upcoming Harry Smith Exhibition at the @whitneymuseum has received a generous grant from the @warholfoundation! Stay tuned for more details about the opening this fall!🥫🥫🥫

Photo courtesy Getty Images
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#harrysmitharchives 
#harryeverettsmith 
#andywarhol 
#andywarholfoundation 
#whitneymuseum 
#experimentalart
    First slide: Lou Reed’s hand-scrawled list for “Best Albums of All Time” submitted for a 1999 magazine interview. Harry’s Anthology came in at #6 

Second Slide: Lou performing Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” from the Anthology as part of the Harry Smith Project in 2001. Footage courtesy @shoutfactory 
💜😎💜
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#harryeverettsmith 
#harrysmitharchives 
#harrysmithproject 
#loureed 
#velvetunderground 
#blindlemonjefferson 
#anthologyofamericanfolkmusic
    “Early Non-Objective Studies." circa 1950 . . . “Early Non-Objective Studies." circa 1950
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#harrysmith 
#harryeverettsmith 
#harrysmitharchives 
#beatgeneration 
#alchemy
    Today marks 31 years since Harry’s passing. His Today marks 31 years since Harry’s passing. His friend, poet Paola Igliori, described him as dying in her arms, "singing as he drifted away". Smith was pronounced dead one hour later at St. Vincent's Hospital.

Following Smith's death, his branch of the occult organization O.T.O. performed a Gnostic Mass in his honor at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. Smith's ashes were placed in the care of his friend, longtime participant in New York's Beat scene, Rosemarie "Rosebud" Feliu-Pettet, whom Paola Igliori has described as Smith's "spiritual wife."

An expanded version of Paola’s book about Harry, American Magus, has just been released and is available now!
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#aleistercrowley
    Harry Smith was greatly inspired by the work of Ge Harry Smith was greatly inspired by the work of German-American animator/filmmaker Oskar Fischinger. After meeting Fischinger on a trip to Los Angeles, Smith immediately took up filmmaking, and since he had no filmmaking skills or equipment, he drew his first films, colored by spray paint and dyes, directly on the filmstrip - with incredible complexity and fine detail. 

Here you can see an excerpt from Harry Smith’s film No. 3, otherwise known as “Interwoven” which premiered as part of the Art in Cinema series at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1950. Harry was completely enamored with jazz music at that time, particularly Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, and he insisted that he had synchronized his first three painted films to jazz performances by Gillespie. Unfortunately he was not able to afford the cost of transferring the tape to an optical soundtrack and then making the more-expensive sound release prints so he made do with a live jazz accompaniment at the premiere with a band consisting of Atlee Chapman on trombone and bass-trumpet; Henry Noyd on trumpet; Kermit Scott on tenor sax; Robert Warren on Bass; Warren Thompson on drums; and Stanly Willis on piano.
    🐐🏹 Harry Smith’s Zodiac series circa 1974 🐐🏹 Harry Smith’s Zodiac series circa 1974 🦂⚖️

Courtesy @anthologyfilmarchives 
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#zodiac
#alchemy
    In celebration of the world premiere of Martin Sco In celebration of the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s new documentary about the singular @davidjohansen.official we’re sharing a clip of David playing a cover of Jim Jackson’s 1928 folk song “Old Dog Blue” at one of the Harry Smith Project concerts. 

David has long been a friend of the HSA, and in addition to fronting The New York Dolls and subsequently reinventing himself as Buster Poindexter, he also released an album in 2000 called “David Johansen and the Harry Smiths” containing songs from or inspired by the Anthology of American Folk Music. For those in the area, Personality Crisis: One Night Only will be screening at @thenyff this weekend!
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#harryeverettsmith 
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#davidjohansen 
#martinscorsese 
#nyff
    RIP Joe Bussard - a fascinating man and a fanatica RIP Joe Bussard - a fascinating man and a fanatical record collector; we were very fortunate that he provided some rare 78s for the 1997 re-issue of the Anthology of American Folk Music. 

Second slide: Opening paragraph from Joe's obituary in the @washingtoncitypaper
📸: Eilon Paz for Dust & Grooves
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#anthologyofamericanfolkmusic 
#joebussard 
#recordcollection 
#78rpm 
#physicalmedia 
#harryeverettsmith 
#harrysmitharchives
    The wonderful folks at Low Profile Podcast recentl The wonderful folks at Low Profile Podcast recently chatted with musician (Beat Happening, D+) and author Bret Lunsford about his 2021 book Sounding For Harry Smith, a thorough history of the region and communities that helped shape Harry Smith's life's work by way of newspaper clippings, firsthand stories from Harry's schoolmates, and general detective work. 

The book is a fascinating glimpse into Anacortes, WA and the unconventional beginnings of Harry's many fascinations. Head over to @lowpropodcast or wherever you get your podcasts to have a listen, and check your local indie bookstore or soundingforharrysmith.com to buy Bret's book!
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#harrysmitharchives
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#anacortes 
#bretlunsford 
#beathappening 
#anthologyofamericanfolkmusic 
#freakfolk
    Discovered quite a strange throwback in the archiv Discovered quite a strange throwback in the archives: Harry in a Sotheby's World Mastercard ad 🧐🍸🥫

From left: Jack Smith, unidentified man, Harry Smith, Panna Grady, William S. Burroughs, and Andy Warhol at El Quijote restaurant, New York City, winter 1964-65.

Photograph by David McCabe
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#williamburroughs 
#jacksmith 
#beathappening
    Peter Lamborn Wilson American anarchist, author, Peter Lamborn Wilson

American anarchist, author, and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson a.k.a. Hakim Bey, passed away on May 22, 2022.

Longtime Harry Smith Archives board member, PLW and Smith shared many scholarly interests including mysticism, the occult, approaching the world with unique and unconventional ways of thinking. PLW attended Harry Smith’s lecture series at Naropa Institute from 1988 – 1991.  After Smith’s death Peter took up the post lecturing at Naropa annually what became known as The Harry Smith Lectures in Strange Anthropology.  He also edited Harry Smith’s Naropa Lectures which remain unpublished. 

He will be sorely missed.
    On this day 99 years ago, Harry Everett Smith was On this day 99 years ago, Harry Everett Smith was born at Wilcox Hospital in Portland, Oregon to a salmon cannery manager and a school teacher. From that day forward the worlds of ethnomusicology, animation, preservation, art, and mysticism would be forever changed by this scrawny and endlessly curious future iconoclast. Happy Birthday Harry! 

Pictured: Harry in the Bellingham High School 1943 Shuksan yearbook, followed by Harry front and center with the freshman boys at Anacortes High School in 1939. 
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#ethnomusicology
    It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to ou It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our friend Bob Neuwirth. Bob was important to the Harry Smith Archives in many ways, having known Harry from his days at the Chelsea Hotel (introduced to him by the inimitable Patti Smith, pictured here with Neuwirth) and playing at all the Harry Smith Project concerts. 

When asked about the enduring influence of the anthology, Bob stated, “I think the reason that these songs continued to be relevant because they have to do with life, death; you know, blood, betrayal, murder, intoxication, resentment, envy, greed, you know, pride, gluttony, lust, sloth. Have I left any of the deadlies out? They really are down to the bone songs, man. And hey, if you can’t relate to these, you are your television set, you know.” 

We’ll miss you Bob. 💜
    What a great honor to attend the opening festiviti What a great honor to attend the opening festivities for the beautiful @bobdylancenter in Tulsa. A selection of books and records from Harry's personal collection are now housed there (in The Douglas and Anne Brinkley Archive Reading Room) to be kept safe and sound. Special thanks to curator and archivist Mark Davidson (pictured in final slide) for acknowledging the value of Harry's contributions and allowing us to be a part of such a momentous project.
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#bobdylan 
#bobdylancenter
    BOB ! On BOK. @bobdylancenter BOB ! On BOK. @bobdylancenter
    Film #10, the final selection in Smith's first fil Film #10, the final selection in Smith's first films that were compiled and came to be called Early Abstractions, was recut in 1957 to create Film #11, aka Mirror Animations. 

The film is meticulously synchronized to Thelonious Monk's "Misterioso". Smith said that he originally intended to base a painting on Monk's work, but "I realized that it would be impossible to make it in the form of a painting, because his music was so complex, and it would be better to make a film." 

In these films, Smith arranged alchemical and hermetic imagery to Monk's piano pyrotechnics in a precise and rigorous way, assembling mandala-like collages with found materials.
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#harrysmith 
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#theloniusmonk 
#misterioso 
#collageanimation 
#alchemy
    Today marks the 25th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg Today marks the 25th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death. Smith and Ginsberg were friends for over 30 years, during which Allen allowed Harry to live with him on multiple occasions for months at a time. Ginsberg often tried to support Smith when he fell on hard times, and expanded upon their complex relationship in this snippet from an interview with Hal Willner:

"Everytime we'd go up there he'd get me high, then he'd ask me for money, because he was starving. Apparently, he went around doing that with everybody. He had no source [of income] but he was a genius, like the painter Albert Pinkham Ryder. I got to be scared of going up there because he'd get me tremblingly high on grass and show me these amazing movies. I'd be totally awed and intimidated by the universality of his genius in music and painting. In addition, he could write mad long, long poems, rhymed. But he'd always hit me up for money, if he could capture me, get me up there and hypnotize me with his films."

These drug-fueled evenings served as inspiration for Ginsberg's poem "Journal Night Thoughts" (1961-64).

[Photo credit: Brian Graham]
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#allenginsberg 
#beatgeneration 
#halwillner
    Happy April Fools' Day from everyone's favorite tr Happy April Fools' Day from everyone's favorite trickster anthropologist 😈

"Over the course of many years he claimed, as his biographer Darrin Daniel has noted, variously: to be the mystic Aleister Crowley’s illegitimate son; that his mother was the “missing” Romanov Czarina, Anastasia; and that he smoked marijuana for the first time with Woodie Guthrie in the back of the Sun studios in Memphis, Tennessee—none of which were true." - Michael Betancourt

Photo credit: John Cohen
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#harrysmitharchives 
#occult 
#beatnik 
#anthropology
    More than just an avid collector of interesting ob More than just an avid collector of interesting objects, Harry was fascinated by finding nonverbal ways to communicate using taxonomy and patterns. 

As he told John Cohen in a 1969 interview:
“…The type of thinking that I applied to records, I still apply to other things, like Seminole patchwork or to Ukrainian Easter eggs. The whole purpose is to have some kind of series of things. Information as drawing and graphic designs can be located more quickly than it can be in books. The fact that I have all the Seminole designs permits anything that falls into the canon of that technological procedure to be found there. It’s like flipping quickly through. It’s a way of programming the mind, like a punch card of a sort.”

Swipe through to see stills from Smith’s Film #15 (Untitled animation of Seminole patchwork patterns), ca. 1965-66.
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