Friday January 16 7:00 pm | $12 in advance, $15 day of show
HEAVEN AND EARTH MAGIC is a feature length cut-out animated film Harry Smith shot
entirely alone in his tiny East Side apartment in New York. Using his own bed as an animation
stand, he appropriated images from 19th century sources to tell an eerie, visually austere story
about a woman, a watermelon, and a toothache.
Film historian and Oregon Cartoon Institute co-founder Dennis Nyback researched the
expanded cinema techniques Harry Smith used to present the film in 1961 and will recreate
them in real time, moving improvisationally between a 16mm film and two 35mm slide projectors
to create a layered image onscreen.
The panel discussion after the screening includes Dennis Nyback; Chuck Pirtle, a Harry
Smith historian; Eric Isaacson, the owner of Mississippi Records, which recently reissued Harry
Smith’s famed Anthology of American Folk Music.