MAHAGONNY

For Harry Smith, art was often a matter of placing the right things in the right order. Its also true of Smiths magnum opus, the 1980 Mahagonny, a 2 hour 21 minute experimental feature. He originally presented it for a five-night run at the Anthology Film Archives using four 16-millimeter projectors, arranged to create a four-panel square. Each projector displayed a different stream of images, creating a constantly shifting mosaic of shapes, colors and human figures. Unseen for 20 years, Mahagonny (which Smith sometimes called his Film #18) has been restored. The four 16-millimeter tracks of the original have been printed onto a single 35-millimeter strip, solving the thorny problems of synchronization posed by the original. Smith died in 1991 without completing Mahagonny. But even unfinished, it is a monumental work, intellectually ambitious and quite lovely to look at. (Dave Kehr)