Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + Heaven & Earth Magic
7th House at the Philosophical Research Society, the Harry Smith Archives, and Los Angeles Filmforum present
Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + Heaven & Earth Magic
Part of The Cosmic Collage of Harry Smith
Thursday May 21, 2026, 7:30 pm
At the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.
NOTE THE CHANGE IN DAY and LOCATION
Tickets: $20 general, at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/adam-green-explains-harry-smith-heaven-earth-magic-1962-tickets-1988245251068
Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC (1957) — A Lecture by Artist, Musician, and Harry Smith Enthusiast Adam Green plus screening of Smith's renowned film — Adam Green in person! — co-presented by 7th House & Los Angeles Filmforum
This event is part of the series THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH (April 25-May 31), co-presented by The Philosophical Research and Harry Smith Archives. See below for series description!
Artistic polymath Adam Green presents an exploration of Harry Smith's esoteric artistic practices + a screening of Smith's landmark film!
The Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House, The Harry Smith Archives, and Los Angeles Filmforum are proud to present a special event in our ongoing THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH series with a live presentation by musician, artist, and filmmaker Adam Green, followed by a screening of HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC (1957-1962), Smith’s enduring and most widely recognized experimental classic.
Drawing from Harry Smith’s vast and enigmatic body of work, Green will deliver a richly illustrated talk, drawing on a curated array of slides and video materials, exploring the esoteric foundations of Smith’s creative practice — tracing the influence of Kabbalah, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, and symbolic systems that informed his films, drawings, and archival projects. Moving across Smith’s work as a unified field of inquiry, the presentation will consider how his deeply syncretic approach to image-making functioned as a kind of alchemical process: one that sought transformation not only of materials, but of perception itself. In dialogue with the legacy of Manly P. Hall and the philosophical foundations of the Philosophical Research Society, Green will also reflect on what Smith’s visionary methodology offers to artists today, including how he has drawn from these ideas within his own work.
Following an audience Q&A, Green will introduce the evening’s finale: a screening of HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC, a dense, hand-animated cosmology constructed from cut-out images, occult diagrams, and fragments of found material, assembled into a kind of hermetic narrative without fixed meaning or stable interpretation. Developed over many years from an encyclopedic range of sources, the film unfolds through a series of ritualistic transformations, surreal tableaux, and symbolic operations, moving fluidly between the sacred and the absurd, the comic and the cosmic. At once playful and profoundly esoteric, HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC discards narrative coherence in favor of an associative, initiatory experience — one that invites viewers not to decode its symbols, but to move through them.
Adam Green is an artistic polymath — a songwriter, filmmaker, visual artist, and poet whose work blends fleshy humor, heartbreak, and metaphysical surrealism into a genre all his own. As co-founder of the antifolk band The Moldy Peaches, he helped define a generation of raw, emotionally candid music that continues to resonate globally. Since then, Green has released twelve solo albums, and in 2023 received a tribute album Moping In Style — which brought together the voices of Father John Misty, The Libertines, Frankie Cosmos, Devendra Banhart, Regina Spektor, and Sean Ono Lennon covering Green’s songs — a testament to his influence across musical worlds.
Green’s creative reach extends far beyond songwriting. His paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including a landmark show at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. He has directed two full-length movies — The Wrong Ferarri (2010), the first feature film shot entirely on an iPhone, and Adam Green's Aladdin (2016), the hand-built fantasy epic which Buzzfeed called “the trippiest movie ever made.” His recent work explores the interconnected mythology of his “Houseface” universe through poetry books and graphic novels, developing a distinct narrative world that spans disciplines and defies boundaries.
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Also available all month:
Brain Drawings: The Art of Harry Smith
On view May 7-May 31, 2026
in the Hansell Gallery at The Philosophical Research Society
Gallery Hours: Tuesdays-Saturdays 12-6pm and by appointment (info@prs.org)
Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception:
Thursday, May 7th 5:00-7:00pm
This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Harry Smith Archives
Brain Drawings: The Art of Harry Smith invites audiences into the singular world of Harry Smith (1923–1991)—experimental filmmaker, anthropologist, musicologist, and artist—whose practice was shaped by a deep engagement with esoteric spirituality, occult traditions, and systems of hidden knowledge. Describing himself as a “shaman in residence,” Smith approached art-making as a form of inquiry, mapping correspondences between sound, image, and cosmology.
This exhibition brings together a wide-ranging selection of Smith’s work, from early experiments in visualizing sound to a rare 1954 four-color silkscreen of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Also on view are string figure constructions, materials related to the Anthology of American Folk Music, photographs, and rarely seen films and audio works. Archival footage—including documentation of Smith’s rooms at the Chelsea Hotel and Naropa Institute—offers an intimate view into the environments that shaped his thinking.
Both rigorous and idiosyncratic, Brain Drawings presents Smith’s practice as a sustained exploration of pattern, transformation, and meaning—an invitation to encounter a body of work that resists easy categorization and rewards close attention.
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In celebration of what would have been his 103rd solar return, The Philosophical Research Society and Harry Smith Archives are proud to present THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH, a series dedicated to the boundless, unruly imagination of Harry Everett Smith—artist, filmmaker, folklorist, collector, and self-described alchemist of culture—presented in collaboration with 7th House, Los Angeles Filmforum, The American Museum of Paramusicology, The Getty Research Institute, Zebulon, and 2220 Arts + Archives.
A singular figure of the American avant-garde, Smith moved fluidly between disciplines and identities, assembling a body of work that resists containment. From his hand-painted and cut-out animation films—whose vivid abstractions and visionary logic would prove foundational to the development of psychedelic art—to his groundbreaking Anthology of American Folk Music—a meticulously curated, deeply idiosyncratic collection of early American recordings that would go on to inspire the folk revival of the 1960s and shape generations of musicians beyond—from ethnographic recordings to vast personal archives of string figures, paper airplanes, and occult diagrams, Smith approached the world as something to be gathered, transformed, and re-enchanted. His practice was not simply interdisciplinary—it was cosmological.
Deeply engaged with esoteric traditions, mysticism, and systems of hidden knowledge, Smith understood art-making as a form of spiritual inquiry. Alchemical thought, Kabbalah, and ritual practice were not peripheral interests but central frameworks through which he interpreted sound, image, and pattern. Across his work, correspondences emerge: between music and geometry, folklore and magic, the everyday and the divine.
Bringing together film screenings, an art exhibit, live musical performances, panel discussions, artist presentations, an online class, and a special visit to the Getty Research Institute’s Harry Smith collection, this series traces Smith’s expansive creative universe, reflecting both the breadth of his output and the coherence of his vision. Join us as we investigate and celebrate Smith’s remarkable life and works, where disciplines dissolve, curation becomes creation, and art serves as a bridge between the material and the unseen.
THE COSMIC COLLAGE OF HARRY SMITH
Thursday May 7 – Sunday May 31
Events:
Thursday May 7, 5:00pm – 7:00pm — Brain Drawings: The Art of Harry Smith Exhibition Opening Reception — in the Philosophical Research Society's Hansell Gallery. Free with RSVP, info & tickets at prs.org
Thursday May 7, 7:30 pm — Mind Maps: Exploring Harry Smith’s Hermetic Allusions feat. LATE SUPERIMPOSITIONS (1965) – Multimedia Presentation, Screening, & Panel Discussion w/ David Orr, William Kiesel, Jessica Hundley, Chuck Stein, and Rani Singh — at the Philosophical Research Society. $15, info & tickets at prs.org
Thursday May 21, 7:30 pm — Adam Green Explains Harry Smith + HEAVEN & EARTH MAGIC (1957) — A Lecture by Artist, Musician, and Harry Smith Enthusiast Adam Green plus screening of Smith's renowned film — Adam Green in person! — co-presented by 7th House & Los Angeles Filmforum — at the Philosophical Research Society. $20, info & tickets at prs.org
Sunday May 24, 11:00 am — Harry Smith’s Anthology as a Magical Instrument presented by Matt Marble of The American Museum of Paramusicology (Online Presentation) — As part of his online The Heretical Heart of Americana series, author, musician, and artist Matt Marble explores Smith's legacy as anthropologist and magician, examining the occult frameworks which charged the work that helped ignite the folk revival, pioneer innovations in film, and refuse the dead logics of colonialism and commerce that threaten to weaken the soul of the nation for profit. — Online via Zoom. $20, info & tickets at prs.org
Friday May 29, 12:00 pm — Show & Tell: Harry Smith Archive at the Getty Research Institute — A special guided viewing of material by the artist, musicologist, filmmaker, and esoteric icon — at the Getty Center Research Institute. Free with RSVP, info & tickets at https://www.getty.edu/calendar/harry-smith-archive/
Friday May 29, 7:00pm — A Celebration of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music: Tribute Concert — Contemporary artists Eddie Ruscha, Kacey Johansing, Shannon Lay, Barry Johnson, Matt Baldwin, Frank Fairfield, David Elsenbroich and more TBA will interpret the music that inspired Smith on the Zebulon stage for one night only. — at Zebulon. $20, info & tickets at https://zebulon.la/
Sunday May 31, 4:00 pm — LA Filmforum presents Harry Smith’s MAHAGONNY (1980) screening — Harry Smith’s final film, an epic four-screen projection, cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny which he considered it his magnum opus — co-presented by 7th House and the Harry Smith Archives. — at 2220 Arts + Archives. $15, info & tickets at www.lafilmforum.org and 2220arts.org
Film No. 12: Heaven and Earth Magic
Film No. 12: Heaven and Earth Magic
By Harry Smith, 1957-1962, b&w, sound 66 minutes
Harry Smith describes Film #12 as follows, “The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel, Montreal and the second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Muller on the day Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London.”
One of Smith’s most well-known works; this black and white collage film culled from cut-outs from nineteenth-century catalogues, the film traverses the landscape of an hermetic dream.
“NO. 12 can be seen as one moment – certainly the most elaborately crafted moment – of the single alchemical film which is Harry Smith’s life work. In its seriousness, its austerity, it is one of the strangest and most fascinating landmarks in the history of cinema. Its elaborately constructed soundtrack in which the sounds of various figures are systematically displaced onto other images reflects Smith’s abiding concern with auditory effects.” –P. Adams Sitney