Sunday, May 31, 2026 at 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM
2220 Arts + Archives, Los Angeles
Los Angeles Filmforum, the Harry Smith Archive, and The Philosophical Research Society's 7th House Screenings present *Filmforum 50, program 12: Harry Smith’s Film #18: Mahagonny*. Closing event of *The Cosmic Collage of Harry Smith*. ∆ Experimental filmmaker, anthropologist, painter, and musicologist Harry Smith’s final film was an epic four-screen projection titled *Mahagonny*. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera *Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny* for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. His friends have said that Smith was obsessed with the opera, playing it over and over in his room at the Chelsea Hotel. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. Mahagonny is an allegory of contemporary life; it explores the needs and desires of man amid the rituals of daily life in New York City. Smith’s New York, like *Mahagonny*, is a place where everything is permitted and the only sin is not having enough money. Much of the film takes place within the Chelsea Hotel. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation. Complete program notes at: https://www.lafilmforum.org/schedule/