"Exploding out of San Francisco’s vibrant late-60s counter-culture, Luminous Procuress is a psychedelic odyssey of unabashed hedonism. The only feature film by artist, mystic and polymath Steven Arnold, the film celebrates gender-fluidity and pan-sexuality in a voyeuristic phantasmagorical journey towards spiritual ecstasy."
Electronic OST by Creel-god Warner Jepson (whose work I reviewed here).
(via Andrew Smith via John Coulhart / { feuilleton })
"Often compared to the works of Fellini, Jack Smith and Kenneth Anger, and featuring the outrageous talents of the avant garde drag troupe The Cockettes, as well as artist ruth weiss, Luminous Procuress was an underground sensation upon release but disappeared from circulation for many years. Now fully restored in all its sensuous glory, Luminous Procuress’s subversive delights are ready to be discovered anew."
Along with Jack Smith/K.Anger I also am minded of Ze Whiz Kidz, Pink Narcissus, the Angels of Light, Les Petites Bonbons, a less abjection oriented Ridiculous Theatre, etc etc. A queered counterculture. The Underground but without the macho adventurism and Rousseau-esque back to Nature fantasies. An urban and urbane Underground, in love with plastic, glitter, neon.
Further proof that glam of the Roxy / Bowie type was not such a total break from the Sixties, that there was continuity as well as rupture - the pandrogyny and polysexuality and freak-out excess shifting subtly in tone towards decadence and nostalgia, the melancholy palette and bygone evocations of Biba
Also a hint of Zardoz in there, as well as the psychedelic-camp decor of Avengers/Prisoner/The Final Programme
In-depth appreciation of Luminous Procuress by Steve Seid.
"The creation of a personal dream-world in cinematic terms seems to have been the aim of film maker Steven Arnold. Mr. Arnold studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and received an M.S. in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970. His short films have all been beautiful, visual experiments in color and mysterious settings where mythological creatures are given a celluloid life of their own. Mr. Arnold’s medium-length film, Messages, Messages, attracted a great deal of critical attention when it was shown during the New Directors section of the Cannes Film Festival, and it was linked by the French critics to the fanciful, cinema reveries of Cocteau or Fellini. If Steven Arnold admires the work of these filmmakers, his work does not imitate them, and his first feature, Luminous Procuress is an altogether extraordinary, individualistic phantasmagoria. It was filmed entirely in San Francisco over a two-year period, and describes the adventures of two wandering youths in San Francisco who visit the home of a mysterious woman, the Procuress. She is an elegant emblem of sorcery, her vivid features glowing under bizarre, striking maquillage, and one is not certain who she is or where she intends to lead the protagonists. Although the language she speaks is vaguely Russian, it appears that the Procuress has psychic powers. She discerns a sympathetic response to her on the part of the youths, and by magical means, conducts them through fantastic rooms, on a psychic journey. Through strange passageways, one voyages with the Procuress and her charges, glimpsing hidden nightmares and panoplied chambers of revelry, where celebrants, ornately festooned, dance and make love before unseen gods. The youths are soon drawn into the sensuality of the Procuress’ spellbound kingdom, and one is reminded of the sorceress-neighbor to Guilietta in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits. Only here, in Arnold’s film, the spectator is a willing participant in some unspeakably attractive but menacing ecstasy. The sexes become androgynous and one remains entranced by the wonder of such a film as Luminous Procuress."
I mean to comment on your first post, but this is an even better jumping-off point...
ReplyDelete- I would quibble with one minor bit - minus the macho, yes, but there was quite a bit of back to nature sentiment involved - even sticking with aesthetics, part of the whole Cockettes/'genderfuck' experience was mixing ultrasheen glitter showbiz with hairy beard-and-body-hair let-it-all-hang-out-ism - showing how one could highlight the other...
- Going back to the broader issue - I want to expand on your point that it's often evaded how connected psychedelia was with art/fashion, because what else were the light shows, the posters, the comics and the underground press? You have to keep excusing and hedging.
- Even the notion that dressed-down denim somehow doesn't constitute 'a style' seems mistaken to me, not least because if you remember the context the West Coast groups were initially thinking of - Bakersfield country - you realize that it was almost as much of a conscious affect as anything else (even the Dead got Nudie suits!)
Growing hair long in itself was originally a style statement and a political statement. A declaration of unmanliness and effeminacy rather than 'wild man of the woods'. perhaps it took on that aura later in the '60s as the whole 'getting it together in the country' vibe developed.
ReplyDeleteThe Cockettes thing of beards + make up (extreme eye makeup, eyelids encrusted with little jewels) looks like a deliberate confusion of gender signs - anything goes, total freedom, can have it both ways - but also a desire to disorient and startle -
'Having it both ways' is a good way to put it. And while I think you're partially right about long hair equaling rebellious effeminacy, I think this one of those things where there's no one single motivation behind it - certainly, the Beats growing their beards out is as much of a precursor as the Beatles/Epstein imitating French style
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