HEAVEN AND EARTH MAGIC (1960) 66 mins
A rare screening of psychedelic archivist, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, mystic and paper airplane hoarder Harry Smith’s legendary work of obsessive cinematic stop-motion occultism, the primitively hypnotic and hallucinatory Heaven and Earth Magic (1957-1962) presented with a live score by the equally legendary composer JG Thirlwell, performing a surround sound soundtrack using electronics, triggered samples and theremin.
Harry Smith’s most famous work is the mysterious spiritual cut out epic Film #12 (or, as named by fellow abstract film-maker and friend Jonas Mekas, Heaven and Earth Magic). The film seems to have been made between the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. During this process Smith often used sleep deprivation as a gateway to spirituality and the subconscious, a process of falling asleep, awaking and resuming work continuously next to his camera. In Smith’s words this was “to make the whole thing automatic… some kind of universal process was directing these so-called arbitrary processes.” Smith gave a typically mysterious summary of the narrative as follows:
“The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel and Montreal. The second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Müller on the day Edward VII dedicated the Great Sewer of London.” Stephen Cavalier (skwigly.co.uk)
HARRY SMITH
Existing as a semi-mythological creature even while alive, Harry Smith regularly fabricated or embellished aspects of his origins and accomplishments, slipping in and out of peoples’ grasp with an intensity that could swing along a spectrum from kind and charismatic to belligerent.
Throughout his time on this planet, he cultivated different audiences as a filmmaker, multimedia artist of every dimension, anthropologist, music anthologist, aural documentarian, quixotic mechanical engineer and expert on innumerable esoteric subjects. Aided by a deep interest in alchemy, magic, drug-induced states and Native American culture, along with his apparent asexuality and quantum view of an interconnected cosmos, he also seemed a prescient mystic.
Recognizing patterns in everything, he was never a casual listener of music—including classical, folk, jazz, country, blues and all kinds of indigenous music—but experienced it as a complex, multidimensional communication that some of his films and paintings would attempt to analyze. He was also a famous collector, not only of rare records, but of objects such as Ukrainian Easter eggs, paper airplanes and string figures.
His archivist and late-in-life friend Rani Singh adds that “Smith compulsively collected everything from books, pop-up books, audio recordings, Indian women’s beaded costumes, tarot cards, and gourds to things shaped like other things (spoons shaped like ducks, banks shaped like apples, anything shaped like a hamburger).” The myth of Harry Smith is further heightened by its gaps; a semi-transient lifestyle mixed with an unpredictable, frequently substance-addled and fiery nature led to his either losing or destroying many of his collections, art and writing. Fortunately, many of his films managed to endure. Brittany Gravely (Harvard Film Archive)
