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Director’s Introduction
Atlantis and Other New York Tales is an intimate film. It brings you close enough to Samuel R. Delany to count the hairs on his beard. Mr. Delany, in turn, brings you close enough to his life and his loves and his personal obsessions to embarrass you with the intimate details or more likely, to serve as your guide on a brief but exhilarating tour into his unique world.
Atlantis is that most unusual of filmic happenings, a film of moment that happened easily and quickly, and how it came to be is worth a mention. Atlantis began as a short sequence in a much larger documentary, still in production, intended to introduce and provide context to Mr. Delany’s appearance. However, his reading at the Judson Church’s Millennium Festival turned out to be a very strong piece on its own terms. Possessing a dramatic unity and, despite strong sexual content, a warmth and surprising accessibility, Atlantis insisted on a life of its own; we owe this to Mr. Delany.
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