Mary Jordan, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

One of the most influential underground artists of the '60s, Jack Smith - filmmaker, photographer, actor and full-time, life-long eccentric - had a willful disdain for celebrity even as he became the mentor and model for Andy Warhol, who famously admitted that Smith was "the only person I would ever try to copy." For her film The Destruction of Atlantis, writer-director Mary Jordan spent five years assembling interviews and, most importantly, extremely rare footage - including Smith's notorious, censored, sued, banned 1962 sex-drugs-nudity masterwork Flaming Creatures - for her incisive look at the late East Village denizen who was, in many respects, his own worst enemy.

•