Jerry Tartaglia

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 portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

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 idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

A.I.D.S has become a convenient excuse to desexualize gay culture and to terminate the gay liberation movement. This film confronts the viewer to these facts. A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. was selected for the A.I.D.S. Media: Counter - representations program of the Whitney Museum, 1989.

Uncompleted 60 minute film starring Ondine and Peggy Gormley. Pope Ondine rages and pontificates on Queer life, the hopelessness of heterosexualism, and the importance of having a good hairdo.

A film that explores the Teleculture's treatment of AIDS as a consumer image.

A Short History of the Future is a film essay based upon Jerry Tartaglia's study of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1932 film Das Blaue Licht. Selected sequences from her film have been reedited in order to highlight the interior process of creative focus in the mind of a film artist.

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 idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

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 idiosyncrasies in 21 thematic chapters. It's a film essay about the artist’s work, rather than a documentary about his life. An unmediated vision of Jack Smith, an invitation to join him in his lost paradise.

A.I.D.S has become a convenient excuse to desexualize gay culture and to terminate the gay liberation movement. This film confronts the viewer to these facts. A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. was selected for the A.I.D.S. Media: Counter - representations program of the Whitney Museum, 1989.

Uncompleted 60 minute film starring Ondine and Peggy Gormley. Pope Ondine rages and pontificates on Queer life, the hopelessness of heterosexualism, and the importance of having a good hairdo.

A film that explores the Teleculture's treatment of AIDS as a consumer image.

A Short History of the Future is a film essay based upon Jerry Tartaglia's study of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1932 film Das Blaue Licht. Selected sequences from her film have been reedited in order to highlight the interior process of creative focus in the mind of a film artist.

A short film essay that is a comment on the restoration work that Jerry Tartaglia did for Jack Smith's films. It utilizes material from one of Smith's performances along with several film stills from his works

A short remembrance of growing up gay, searching for an identifiable image on the movie screen. This character chose Bette Davis in All About Eve. The film includes clips from Davis' performance and the narrator's childhood home movies.

Is What Was is an experimental documentary film essay that began as a visual diary of a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin, where gay men were tortured and murdered by the Nazis.

Is What Was is an experimental documentary film essay that began as a visual diary of a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin, where gay men were tortured and murdered by the Nazis.

Masturbation bathed in red light.

A film that uses found footage, 19th century photographs of affectionate men, digitized video imagery, and gay ephemera to imagine a past and create a future.

A personal recollection of a time past, when gay identity was a source of joy rather than of mourning.

Jerry Tartaglia's friend, David Kline, is dying from an infection associated with HIV. This 17 minute short is a reflection on that.

A pastoral hymn to the God Pan; filmed at the Short Mountain Collective in Tennessee; adapted from a text by Aleister Crowley.

Jerry Tartaglia's irreverent papal fashion short.

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) interweaves images form Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour with images from gay male sex films. It forces the viewer to question the point of view in looking at "pornographic" images.