Benjamin Smoke

This American documentary focuses on songwriter, composer and singer, Benjamin (born Robert Dickerson) over the course of ten years as he negotiates the music scene hoping to make a name for himself and maintain the status quo of his life. Benjamin is an underground musician, speed freak, occasional drag queen and HIV+ homosexual man playing punk, fronting the queer-core band Opal Foxx Quartet before forming the blues-oriented band Smoke. Benjamin is from Cabbagetown, Atlanta, home of the go-cart and a mill town where, in Benjamin’s youth, people were poor and drugs and hustlers were in abundance. Extensive interviews with Benjamin are revelatory and deeply personal as he discusses his drug intake, creative urges, sex, gay politics, being HIV+, death and his life’s ambitions. Footage of Benjamin performing live and in the studio shows him to be a talented artist, who sings in a style similar to Tom Waits. This compassionate portrait is quite riveting and fairly down-beat but is also an inspiring chronicle of the human spirit. Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen flesh out the context of Benjamin’s upbringing by examining the social strata of Cabbagetown, an under-ground haven and seedy white-trash neighbourhood before being yuppified in the 1990s. Features a guest appearance by Patti Smith, an artist who inspired Benjamin, and in the bonus footage, a live performance from Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power.