Film: NORMAL LOVE

Jack Smith’s Normal Love bears evidence of the influence that the sexual revolution and homosexual countercultures had on underground cinema. Rather than trying to move beyond the coded mainstream representations of queerness as monstrous, Smith instead takes the radical step of rendering this connection indisputable, leaning into the power attributed to these figures mythologically and portraying them as beautiful and alluring. Smith’s approach influenced his contemporaries, such as Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and Derek Jarman, and inspired later filmmakers and artists such as John Waters, Guy Maddin, and The Boulet Brothers of Dragula fame.