Benjamin Smoke

United States

2000

72 Min

Color, Black and White

English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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CAST Benjamin Dickerson, Patti Smith, Tim Campion, Bill Taft, Brian Halloran

ED Jem Cohen, Nancy Roach, Peter Sillen

MUSIC Smoke

Synopsis

The melancholy and uplifting life story of Robert Dickerson AKA Benjamin Smoke is luminously filmed in this compelling documentary. Smoke, a haggard southern drag queen singer, with a punk appearance, the voice of Tom Waits and the spirit of a philosopher tells his life to the camera through off-hand comments, crackpot commentary and tale-telling. Smoke’s ramblings on music, misbehavior, and growing up southern and gay in his hometown Atlanta suburb of Cabbagetown, are punctuated by breathtaking imagery of the southern locale. Director Jem Cohen, an experimental film pioneer who has worked with REM, Fugazi, and Peter Sillen, and who directed Speed Racer, the story of another southern eccentric rocker, Vic Chestnut, brings a well-practiced richness to Smoke’s story. Illustrating Smoke’s local stardom, his struggles with homosexuality and drugs and his eventual contraction of AIDS, the film follows Smoke’s abstract, dementia-tinged existence. As Smoke’s AIDS gets worse, his music becomes more redemptive. The climax of the story comes when Smoke meets his lifelong inspiration and idol, Patti Smith, and performs the opening at one of her shows. The film begins with the text from a Patti Smith poem about Smoke, and ends with a solitary shot of her dramatically reading the poem: a good way to show the far-ranging affect of the small but extraordinary life of Benjamin Smoke. —Rotten Tomatoes

Director

Jem Cohen

Jem Alan Cohen (born 1962) is an award-winning New York City-based filmmaker known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats (16mm, Super 8, video) and collaborations with music artists.

Cohen was born in Kabul, Afghanistan where his father was working for the U.S. Agency for Information and Development. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1984, with a concentration on painting and photography. Jem never attended a film school.

Cohen found the mainstream Hollywood film industry incompatible with his sociopolitical and artistic views. By applying the DIY ethos of Punk Rock into his filmmaking approach, he crafted a distinct style in his films through various cheap formats of Super 8mm, 16mm, and video. In an interview with The Lamp, Cohen said, “…it’s very inspiring to me, to see people kind of take something outside of the industry, outside of the music industry, and it gave me something of a template to work in film outside of… read more

Jem Alan Cohen (born 1962) is an award-winning New York City-based filmmaker known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats (16mm, Super 8, video) and collaborations with music artists.

Cohen was born in Kabul, Afghanistan where his father was working for the U.S. Agency for Information and Development. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1984, with a concentration on painting and photography. Jem never attended a film school.

Cohen found the mainstream Hollywood film industry incompatible with his sociopolitical and artistic views. By applying the DIY ethos of Punk Rock into his filmmaking approach, he crafted a distinct style in his films through various cheap formats of Super 8mm, 16mm, and video. In an interview with The Lamp, Cohen said, “…it’s very inspiring to me, to see people kind of take something outside of the industry, outside of the music industry, and it gave me something of a template to work in film outside of the film industry. And there are certainly strains of punk that are activist and that are kind of oppositional in nature to the dominant mainstream culture… that’s very inspiring to me…”

Cohen’s longer works include his feature film, CHAIN, and the experimental documentary, Instrument, a portrait of the D.C.-punk band Fugazi that was ten years in the making. Another film that covers a ten year arc, Benjamin Smoke, is about the life of the frontman of the Atlanta, Georgia band Smoke. Other works of note are Lost Book Found, his Walter Benjamin-inspired portrait of New York City, Buried in Light, a series of connected Central and Eastern European city portraits, and his short film about the late Elliott Smith, Lucky Three. In 2002, Cohen made Chain X Three, a precursor to the CHAIN feature film, which was exhibited as a three-channel installation. His concert film of the Dutch band The Ex, Building a Broken Mousetrap, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2006.

In 2005, Cohen curated the four-day FUSEBOX Festival in Ghent, Belgium. A celebratory gathering “at the crossroads of film, music, and activism,” participants included Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine, The Evens, and a side project of Montreal’s Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, called Thee Silver Mountain Elegies Play War Radio, which formed for the occasion.

Other music artists Cohen has collaborated with over the years include Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Vic Chesnutt, Terry Riley, Sparklehorse, R.E.M., T.Griffin, Stephen Vitiello, Miracle Legion, DJ /rupture and Blonde Redhead.

He has also cited that he has previously worked for the film industry as a technician and prop man, some of the directors he has worked under include Alex Cox, John Sayles, and Martin Scorsese.
In addition to his filmmaking, Cohen has taught a workshop titled ’Documentary as a Lyrical Force" at the International Center of Photography. The works of Humphrey Jennings, Helen Levitt, Georges Franju, Santiago Álvarez, and Forugh Farrokhzad, as well as his own, are discussed. —wikipedia

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