At delicatessen this month they are featuring films based on the theme of music. I was asked to program one evening and I chose this totally obscure and wonderful film by Jem Cohen. The film was recommended to me by a friend in Norway whose opinion I trust, and when i finally saw it I was surprisingly deeply moved. So this is the perfect opportunity to screen the Amsterdam premiere of this unique documentary film. So I hope you can make it to this special screening this coming Wednesday!
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 9
20:30
BENJAMIN SMOKE (2000)
Directed by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen
72 minutes
In English
Atmospheric documentary renowned filmmaker Jem Cohen covering the last years of Benjamin, a legendary musician who many admired, including Patti Smith. This is not a bio pic, but rather a portrait of a unique soul. This film was a project of love, and took ten years to complete.
Benjamin lived for many years in Cabbagetown, a neighborhood in Atlanta, an "unsafe" area peopled with hustlers and eccentrics. There, he occasionally dressed up as a drag queen at a young age. When he was just nine years old he would appear in public wearing woman’s clothing, "with a towel on my head, going to the Waffle House in a dress". In New York he found work at the famed club CBGBs which he described as "the filthiest place I ever was". He earned $20 a day, his duties consisted of sweeping up broken glass left by performers and audiences from the evening before.
Benjamin was a known character in the underground scene in 1980s Atlanta and participated in a number of Atlanta music experiments such as Easturn Stars, Monroe is Naked Again, Freedom Puff, Blade Emotion,and the Opal Foxx Quartet. For the band, Benjamin donned the stage name "Miss Opal Foxx". His voice was compared to Tom waits and has since been described as "resembling the roar of a wounded lion". After some of the musicians of the group died tragically, the band SMOKE was conceived in 1992. Benjamin Smoke was renowned for his on-stage banter, never shying away from provoking his viewers, "for a faggot, do I have a rockin' band or what?"
Benjamin was addicted to speed and he also had AIDS though he claimed "HIV is not a death sentence". He eventually lost his life due to Hepatitis C. This sensitive film is a tribute to people who live their own way, who have determination and a special kind of courage, and who never give into conforming to whats considered normal- in other words its a tribute to the human spirit.
This is a very beautifully composed and meticulously processed film. Cohen and Sillen make use of many textures and tones the medium can offer, sometimes alternating between black and white, color, sepia, grainy, pristine and other celluloid manifestations. The use of stills is wonderfully limited to crumbled, cracked and stained photos that look as if they had just been pulled out of pockets. Interspersed through the words of Benjamin Smoke are the views of many musicians who knew him, including Patti Smith.
What one critic had to say:
"In life, the late Atlanta musician known as Benjamin was a jumble of identities--singer, drag queen, drug addict, and wry raconteur. The story of the 10 years before his 1999 death from complications due to HIV makes for an engrossing viewing experience for indie film fans. Directors Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen capture this eccentric figure in glimpses of 16mm and Super 8 as he philosophizes and performs with his bands, the Opal Foxx and, later, Smoke. The film's tone turns bleak as Benjamin's health begins to deteriorate, but his resilient nature, and a moving appearance by Patti Smith that provides a coda for his life, brings a bittersweet finale in this fascinating portrait of a deep dreamer."
Delicatessen
Sumatrastraat 32
Film starts at 20:30
2 Euro
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