A closer look
At just 17 years old, Barbara Rubin borrowed a camera and shot Christmas on Earth, a violently explicit, double-projected, gender-bending underground film that made grown, cynical artists blush. In 1963, she dragged Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground into her orbit, acting as a chaotic networking hub for the counterculture. She projected her film onto the bodies of live bands and completely dismantled the boundaries of traditional cinema, only to abruptly quit the scene, convert to Orthodox Judaism, and vanish from the art world entirely.
