European avant-garde acclaim amplified a banned underground film’s fame

Evidence

Mekas had been invited to judge an experimental film festival in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. When Flaming Creatures was refused a screening, he resigned from the jury, threatened to withdraw the entries of other American filmmakers (including Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Robert Breer, and Gregory Markopoulos) and organized special showings in his hotel room. Among those present, perched on the bathtub or bed, were Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, and Roman Polanski. The word of mouth was sensational. “Two minutes after I met Federico Fellini in Rome,” Stanley Kauffman reported in the New Republic later that winter, “he asked me whether I’d seen Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how illegality and cultural gatekeeping backfire — parallels failed censorship stories discussed across the shelf.