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BLONDE COBRA
USA | 1963 | 33 min
After assembling the delirious sound of Jack Smith (who had just made the controversial Flaming Creatures) and sequences from two aborted film projects shot by Bob Fleischner, with Blonde Cobra the film director Ken Jacobs casts his gaze on “an exploding life”, i.e., in his own words, “on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950s, ‘40s, ‘30s disgust. Silly, self-pitying, guilt-structured and yet triumphing—on one level—over the situation with style, because he’s unapologetically gifted, has a genius for courage, knows that a state of indignity can serve to show his character in sharpest relief. He carries on, states his presence for what it is. Does all he can to draw out our condemnation, testing our love for limits…enticing us into an absurd moral posture the better to dismiss us with a regal ‘screw-off.’” (a.s.)