Benjamin Smoke
Jem Cohen & Peter Sillen:
Benjamin Smoke (USA 2000)
72 min. – Beta – English.
Production: Gravity Hill Films.
Age limit 13+
Benjamin Smoke is the highly acclaimed documentary on legendary underground musician Benjamin. Benjamin Smoke follows the crooked path of this fringe-dweller, speed-freak, occasional drag-queen and all-around renegade living in the hidden Atlanta neighborhood called "Cabbagetown," and playing with his band Smoke.
Benjamin Smoke is a hauntingly beautiful yet unflinching look at a performer whose life has had a profound effect on many artists, including R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and Patti Smith, who appears in the film.
Over a decade in the making, the film traces Benjamin's life from his childhood, to his work with Smoke and previous band the Opal Foxx Quartet, to living with HIV. But Benjamin Smoke is not a traditional music documentary; it is an intricate collage of inteviews, live performances, and time-lapse cinematography, all intercut with still photographs by award-winning photographer Michael Ackerman. What results is an open window into Benjamin's relationship with drugs, music, friends, lovers and the world around him, a little-known and rapidly disappearing pocket of the American South. Above all, Benjamin Smoke is an extension of the performer and his music and a portrait of a true American original.
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Jem Cohen
Jem Cohen was born in Kabul at year 1962. His father was there working for the U.S. Agency for Information and Development. Cohen graduated University of Wesleyan 1984. He has worked for the film industry for ten years in the art department as a technician and prop man. Cohen has commented that majority of these projects he has worked for were a large waste of money. Cohen have made music videos and many music documents. He has worked with many well known artistis including Benjamin, R.E.M, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Patti Smith. Cohen usually directs, shoots and edits his own works. He has also made a feature movie called Chain that premiered in Berlin Film Festival 2004. Cohen has told that his own influences comes mainly from three directors: John Cassavetes, Chris Marker and Jean Vigo.
