Film Love: Queer Undergrounds

Name: Film Love: Queer Undergrounds
Genre: Experimental
Released: 2026-02-12
Duration: 1 h 20 min

Rare 16mm and 8mm films from the 1960s, in digital restorations -- Featuring the legendary Mario Montez -- One night only In the decades before Stonewall, despite various forms of oppression, queer cinema proliferated in the United States. In the 1940s and ‘50s, following from Jean Cocteau, queer filmmakers were entranced with classical mythology and the “geography of the body.” Then, following from Andy Warhol and Jack Smith, a younger generation built on this foundation, entwining mythology with camp, old Hollywood, psychedelics, and drag. On February 12, 2026, at the Plaza Theatre, Film Love illuminates this through-line with a program of rare films from the 1960s underground. Some of the selections have been screened only a handful of times since they were first made. The films of Edward Owens, a black gay filmmaker in Chicago in the mid-60s, show a remarkable visual style that draws on classical portraiture. Exquisitely lit and photographed, Owens’s 1967 short film Remembrance is a study of his mother and her friends, in scenes of leisure and more formal settings. Using the film camera to create superimposed images, Owens updates the classical/mythological wing of an earlier generation of queer filmmakers to the 1960s underground, and the films’ representations of black portraiture and family connections in the context of underground film is rare. We will also screen a newly preserved 8mm portrait film made by Owens at age 16 – only its second public screening. José Rodriguez-Soltero’s lush (and very queer) short film Jerovi, depicts the young man of the film’s title in an onanistic scenario in the forest – in the filmmaker’s words, “a sexual probe of the Narcissus myth.” Jerovi draws on mythology, but in a ‘60s context of gay and sexual liberation – enough to get it banned from the 1965 Ann Arbor Film Festival and praised in the pages of The Village Voice. Then comes Rodriguez-Soltero’s film Lupe, also known as Life, Death and Assumption of Lupe Vélez. This DIY, 16mm version of the life of the doomed Mexican actress features one of the best performances by Mario Montez – the go-to drag performer for New York underground cinema and avant-garde theater. Andy Warhol called Montez “one of the best natural comedians I’d ever met,” and he appeared in more Warhol films than almost anyone else. The quintessential underground filmmaker Jack Smith gave Montez his first film role, in the landmark Flaming Creatures. At the same time, Montez was a key figure in the founding of visionary queer playwright and actor Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. All of these artistic and countercultural strands come together in Lupe. Less concerned with straightforward storytelling than with pure visual sensation and the liberation of drag, Lupe reflects the underground ferment of its time: campy and poignant, low-budget and ambitious, and soundtracked by a dazzling mix of Vivaldi, the Supremes, and various Latin American styles. In all its ramshackle elegance, though, Lupe is primarily a star vehicle for Mario Montez, “the most appealing of drag queens,” in J. Hoberman’s words, “who carries the movie on his broad shoulders.” Long forgotten, then restored in the early 2000s, these sumptuous, sensuous films are precious artifacts of the visual complexities and charged erotic, familial and social connections of the queer underground. Untitled: Owens 18 (Edward Owens, 1966) 4 min, 8mm transfer to 16mm and digital (Courtesy of the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) Remembrance: A Portrait Study (Edward Owens, 1967) 6 min, 16mm transfer to digital Jerovi (José Rodriguez Soltero, 1965) 11 min, 16mm transfer to digital Life, Death and Assumption of Lupe Vélez (a/k/a Lupe) (José Rodriguez Soltero, 1966) 49 min, 16mm transfer to digital — QUEER UNDERGROUNDS is a Film Love event. The Film Love series provides access to great but rarely seen films, often important works unavailable on consumer video. Programs are curated and introduced by Andy Ditzler, and feature lively discussion. Through public screenings and events, Film Love preserves the communal viewing experience, provides space for the discussion of film as art, and explores diverse forms of moving image projection and viewing. Facebook group: Film Love Atlanta Instagram: filmlove_atl www.filmlove.orgExperimentalPT1H20MNot Rated2026-02-12

Edward Owens

José Rodriguez Soltero

Film Love: Queer Undergrounds"Film Love: Queer Undergrounds"

Showtimes

February 12, 7:00 pm