Born in London, Jamie Nares is a transgender painter and filmmaker who moved to New York in 1974, where she quickly became a leading member of the No Wave cinema movement and the Downtown music scene, performing with James Chance and Jim Jarmusch. On January 22, she presents the world premiere of MoMA’s new digital preservation of Arabian Lights, an until now virtually unseen Super 8mm film she co-directed with Edit deAk in 1977. deAk (1948–2017), a writer, critic, occasional artist, and actress who moved to New York in the late 1960s, was a leading thinker on the downtown scene in the 1980s, and together with Rene Ricard (1946–2014) and Diego Cortez (1946–2021) she contributed to conceptual art and filmmaking in the city after Andy Warhol. deAk also cofounded the influential journal Art-Rite (1973–78) with Walter Robinson and the nonprofit artist bookstore Printed Matter, Inc.
Arabian Lights is the second of only two Super 8mm films deAk is known to have fully edited to completion, and the only work she produced outside the New York club scene. During an extended romantic holiday in Egypt in 1977 with Jamie (then James) Nares, the two young visual artists shared a movie camera and recorded intimate, carefree moments that deAk later edited into this unusual self-portrait. Tourism becomes performance art at legendary historic sites and across the bright desert landscapes as their budding romantic relationship plays out. The film was rarely screened during the period, and MoMA’s new digital preservation is drawn from deAk’s unique original Kodachrome print and a reel of assembled outtakes, both recently acquired for the Museum’s collection.
Arabian Lights. 1983. USA. Directed by Edit deAk, James Nares. 4K digital preservation courtesy The Museum of Modern Art with the support of the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. World premiere. Silent. 75 min.