Harry Smith is best known as an experimental filmmaker, but he was so much more. He was a painter and collage artist, a mystic, a student of anthropology, a collector of folk music and indigenous art, and an important — though unsung — figure in the Beat Generation.
Harry was responsible for Folkways Records' 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, which influenced the likes of Bob Dylan, Philip Glass, and Jerry Garcia, and which belatedly won him a Grammy Award in 1991. He's now the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art: "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith.”
S.W. Conser talks with Rani Singh, the director of the Harry Smith Archives. Rani is bringing a collection of Harry's films to Portland for a weekend of screenings. One highlight is Film No. 18: Mahagonny, featuring appearances by Patti Smith, Jonas Mekas, and Allen Ginsberg, and based on the Kurt Weill - Bertolt Brecht opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
And in honor of late sports legend Bill Walton, we also talk with filmmaker and archivist Greg Hamilton about the 1978 documentary Fast Break, an intimate profile of the Portland Trailblazers team that shocked the sports world with a come-from-behind victory in the NBA finals.