Chuck Smith - Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground

Smith's doc shows how a young woman changed the culture by influencing Warhol, Dylan, Ginsberg, and Reed... It's a hell of a ride!
-Now Magazine

If the arts in America ever produced an equivalent to the revolutionary French poet Arthur Rimbaud, it might have been the little-known but extremely influential filmmaker Barbara Rubin. The title of her magnum opus, the 1964 picture "Christmas on Earth," comes from a passage in Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell,” and the groundbreaking extremity of her work — and the actual trajectory of her life — can’t help but evoke the 19th-century poet. The comparison is made several times in "Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground," an informative and overdue documentary directed by Chuck Smith.
-The New York Times

New York’s avant-garde art and film scene of the early 1960s may have been dominated by the likes of Jonas Mekas and Andy Warhol, but “Barbara Rubin and the Exploding New York Underground” offers a fascinating recontextualization of that history, focusing on young Barbara Rubin’s integral role in shaping the era’s blossoming counterculture. Chuck Smith’s documentary is at once accessible and formally daring, echoing its subject’s style while simultaneously celebrating her radical achievements.
-Variety