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Callie Angell was the longtime curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the world's foremost authority on the artist's films. On 29 October 2009, she delivered a heavily illustrated lecture about the collaborations of Jack Smith and Andy Warhol at the Arsenal cinema in Berlin in the context of LIVE FILM! JACK SMITH! Five Flaming Days in a Rented World, a festival of films, performances, and lectures that was curated by Susanne Sachsse, Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, and Marc Siegel for the Arsenal and the HAU/Hebbel am Ufer Theater. Before her death in 2010, Angelí agreed to publish a version of her talk in this special issue of Criticism. In agreeing to do so, she acknowledged that the editorial work on such an image-heavy presentation would be complicated. Her presentation focused on Smith and Warhol's seminal and almost mythical film collaboration Batman Dracula (1964). Angelí generously displayed and commented on images from every role of the almost seven hours of footage from this unfinished film project. Although we are obviously unable to reproduce every image from her talk, we are interested in retaining as much information about the footage as possible in the text that follows. The film has not been preserved and will likely remain unavailable for researchers for some time. Angell's comments on and descriptions of the material therefore provide significant-otherwise unavailable-insight into the nature and scope of this most unusual collaboration between these two seminal artists. Ellipses indicate omissions from the original manuscript. I am extremely thankful to Claire K. Henry, Angell's former assistant and, currently, the Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Andy Warhol Film Project at the Whitney Museum of American Art, for her careful work in editing this text for publication. I also thank the Whitney Museum of American Art and Roger Angelí for their permission to publish it.
-Marc Siegel
On 3 March 1965, David Ehrenstein interviewed Andy Warhol at the Factory while Warhol was in the process of shooting Screen Tests of the poets Ted Berrigan and Joe Brainard. Warhol was rather preoccupied with his filmmaking and was giving simple, rather childish answers to Ehrenstein's questions. When asked, "Who in the New American Cinema do you admire?" Warhol replied, "Jaaaacck Smiiiitttth"...