Poem Posters1967

... with real-life portraits of Jayne Mansfield, Frak O'Hara, Ruth Ford, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Rudy Gernreich, Jonas Mekas and others. –C. H. F. Poem Posters (1967), by Charles Henri Ford. Probably filmed in 1966, with motif of an exhibition of Ford’s large-scale text-image collages, it is an invaluable historical document that shows Factory stars Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga cavorting with Beat legend William Burroughs, musician Ned Rorem, film critic Parker Tyler, literary enfant terribles Frank O’Hara and Ted Berrigan, pop artists Jim Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, and many fabulous unknowns. Jane Mansfield makes a show-stopping appearance–this is probably one of her last images. The soundtrack mixes free jazz (by John Handy), ambient sound, the voices of gallery visitors, Charles Ford reading his own poetry, and a wry commentary by Al Hansen. It is a collaborative enterprise, with camerawork by such luminaries as Marie Menken, Willard Maas, Charles Boultenhouse, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Whitman, Andy Warhol, Rudy Wirtschafter, and Stan Vanderbeek. One can track the influence of almost all of them in the final mix, a luscious color print rich in superimpositions, fish-eye views, and pixelations. –Juan Suarez Documentary of Ford's photo-lithograph exhibition at Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York.