Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground | Christmas on Earth

At just 18 years of age, filmmaker Barbara Rubin shocked audiences with her notorious Christmas on Earth—a low-fi provocation featuring explicit sex and accompanied by (ideally) the ambient sound of an AM rock station. Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground resituates the influential yet largely unheralded figure to her rightful place in the middle of the 1960s New York art scene where she introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, shot Bob Dylan’s Screen Test at Warhol’s Factory, and, according to legendary poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas, “was the one who helped make the chemistry of the period.” The film captures her turn away from the art world and toward religion and family, as well as her tragic death at only 35. (78 mins., DCP) Rubin’s Christmas on Earth screens after the documentary. (30 mins., DCP)