"Underground, Overseas: From Jack Smith and Andy Warhol to Zanzibar" is the title of a film series, curated by Marc Siegel, that investigates previously underexplored historical, thematic, and aesthetic connections between the New York and Paris underground scenes in the 1960s. Thanks to a generous grant from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, the film series began with eighteen programs at the Kino Arsenal. Forum expanded concludes the series with the missing, the found, and the restored.
Jerry Tartaglia, the restorer of Jack Smith's films, presents never of previously unavailable Smith 16mm films and unedited Super 8 film rushes from the fifties and sixties. Callie Angell, curator of the "Andy Warhol Film Project" at the Whitney Museum, presents two recently restored Andy Warhol films from 1966: In The Closet, Nico conducts an audition with a young man in a closet, in Ari and Mario we see drag superstar Mario Montez as the babysitter for Nico's son at the Chelsea Hotel. Together with Esther B. Robinson, who follows the traces of her disappeared uncle Danny Williams, Andy Warhol's cameraman and lover, in A Walk into the Sea, we present Williams's recently discovered films from 1964/65 in their world premiere. Velvet Underground singer Nico sings in Phillippe Garrel's Le lit de la vièrge (1969). Thanks to Jackie Raynal we can show a new copy of this unknown film. Her own film Deux fois (1968) is one of the most important feminist underground works of the time. The series is concluded with a podium discussion, moderated by Marc Siegel, with Callie Angell, Jackie Raynal, Birgit Hein, Marie Losier, and Esther B. Robinson.
