Julia Smith is an artist and scholar currently based in southern New Mexico, where she is conducting archival research and preservation work on the Orville Wanzer Collection at New Mexico State University. Her documentary, Birth of the Acid Western, grew out of the discovery of a largely unexamined film archive and a little-known 1965 feature film, The Devil’s Mistress, produced in Las Cruces by English professor and filmmaker Orville Wanzer.
Part film history, part biography, and part personal journey, Birth of the Acid Western follows Smith’s exploration of Wanzer’s filmmaking legacy and the vibrant culture of student media production he helped foster at NMSU, home of the Creative Media Institute digital filmmaking program. The film argues that The Devil’s Mistress can be viewed as an early precursor to the strange, existential, and revisionist westerns that would later define the acid western genre of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Smith holds a master’s degree in literature and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory, with a research focus on film, sexuality, and 20th-century American culture.
Julia Smith will screen The Devil’s Mistress and her Birth of the Acid Western documentary at 3:30 pm Saturday, July 18 in the Philanthropy Theatre.
