René Rivera, (July 20, 1935 – September 26, 2013), known professionally as Mario Montez, was one of the Warhol superstars, appearing in thirteen of Andy Warhol''s underground films from 1964 to 1966. He took his name as a male homage to the actress Maria Montez, an important gay icon in the fifties and sixties. Before appearing in Warhol''s films, he appeared in Jack Smith's important underground films Flaming Creatures and Normal Love. Mount also stars in the Ron Rice film, Chumlum, made in 1964. Mario Montez, was "a staple in the New York underground scene of the 1960s and ’70s.
In his essay film, Jerry Tartaglia, longtime archivist and restorer of the film estate of queer New York underground, experimental film, and performance legend Jack Smith, deals less with Smith's life than with his work, analyzing Smith's aesthetic idiosyn ...
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The tradition of modernism and neo-avant-garde are faced in the project, in which Radziszewski is confronting both – Polish and Western – narratives of art history. Starting from the subversive work of Natalia LL, Radziszewski raises a series of questi ...
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In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrai ...
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The New York underground linked the paths of the actor and playwright Charles Ludlam, the superstar of avant-garde cinema Mario Montez and the Argentine artist Leandro Katz. An underground community found refuge in a porn cinema that Ludlam rented at night ...
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In Manhattan and Wall Street's majestic, neoclassical architecture, characters try their luck, ambiguously posted between the mundane and transcendence. ...
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The three faces (two women and one tranvestized man) in the series of close up, which are shot separately in their sexual process of the acting and the real, are intercut and edited making into a film. The sound is the voice of continuous laughing of a wom ...
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Smith's third feature film was originally titled "The Kidnapping of Wendell Willkie by the Love Bandit," in reaction to the 1968 Presidential Campaign. It mixes B&W footage of Smith's creatures with old campaign footage of Willkie, a liberal Republican who ...
Watch NowAdventures of Lily Lonely, a wicked gypsy and a mischievous boy. In color. ...
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In 1967, New York City is host to the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant. This documentary takes a look behind the scenes, transporting the viewer into rehearsals and dressing rooms as the drag queen subculture prepares for this big national beauty cont ...
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Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas's first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it ...
Watch NowFeatures underground film makers and stars Jack Smith, Charles Ludlum, and Bill Vehr. A satirical film, comprising a collection of vignettes of the entertainment personalities who were famous during the "Roaring Twenties". Included is a take-off of the Zie ...
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The film — a mix of music, colors, abstract scenes and little dialogue — is based loosely on the life and death of Mexican-American actress Lupe Velez. The music, far more than mere background, borders on serving as the film's narrative and ranges from ...
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Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up. ...
Watch NowEgotistical faded star Hedy Lamarr visits a plastic surgeon to be transformed into the "14-year-old girl" she believes herself to be. She is then caught shoplifting by Mary Woronov and is put on trial, with Tavel as the judge and her five ex-husbands the j ...
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Warhol offers his own version of the notorious 1958 Johnny Stompanato murder case. ...
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The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of fi ...
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Shot at Warhol's Silver Factory, Camp features a group of Superstars putting on a "summer camp" talent show complete with singing, dancing, jokes, poetry, and Gerard Malanga as master of ceremonies. ...
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A follow-up to now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith's role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The direc ...
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Warhol and scenarist Ronald Tavel offer a brutal vision of the Hollywood casting couch with this record of ingenue Mario Montez performing a humiliating auditions for a dictatorial, unseen director. ...
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Jean Harlow-lookalike Harlot (Mario Montez), Gerard Malanga, Philip Fagan, and Carol Koshinskie (with a cat) sit in a room eating bananas as the off-screen voices of Billy Name, Ronald Tavel, and Harry Fainlight discuss various topics. ...
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Black-and-white version of Mario Banana I, in which Mario enjoys another banana. ...
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Batman Dracula is a 1964 black and white American film produced and directed by Andy Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. The film was screened only at Warhol's art exhibits. A fan of the Batman series, Warhol made the movie as a homage. Batman Dra ...
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Ron Rice's Chumlum is one of those films in which the conditions of its construction are integral to the experience of watching it. It is a record of a cadre of creative people having fun on camera, playing dress-up, dancing, flirting, lazing around. ...
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Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a "comedy set in a haunted movie studio." Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participatin ...
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