Charles Henri Ford

Biography

Charles Henri Ford was many things in addition to filmmaker. A pioneer of American surrealism, Ford’s creative activities as a poet, photographer, publisher and general bohemian bon vivant, spanned much of the last century and cultivated intimate connections and collaborations with legendary intellectual and artistic figures ranging from Gertrude Stein to Andy Warhol. Paralleling his artistic trajectory in the avant-garde, as an openly queer man, Ford’s life and work was also at the vanguard of mid-twentieth century sexual politics, and like his gay colleagues and contemporaries— Allen Ginsburg and Kenneth Anger, for example— Ford’s art fused his outsider sexual status with the vital undergr...