The vanished prodigy: at 19, Barbara Rubin created "Christmas on Earth," an erotically charged classic of 1960s underground cinema. Here, the author recounts an all-too-brief career and life

(20.) I first viewed Christmas on Earth at the Whitney in 2000 as part of a Saturday afternoon program titled "Desire" in the series "The Color of Ritual, The Color of Thought: Women Avant-Garde Filmmakers in America 1930-2000." I wrote an article about Barbara Rubin for The Jewish Week, Sept. 22, 2000.

(21.) Joan Alleman Rubin, "Staking Out a New World of Film: Young moviemakers have burst the bounds of Hollywood," Mademoiselle, March 1966, p. 202.

(22.) Malanga, telephone interview, Feb. 11, 2004. I have not been able to track down the others in the film, several of whom are said to be deceased.

(23.) Rubin, "A P.S. to Christmas on Earth," 1966. Collection of Jonas Mekas.

(24.) Ibid.

(25.) Pettet, telephone interview, May 14, 2004.

(26.) Ball, p. 135.

(27.) "When shall we go, beyond the mountains and the seashores, and hail the birth of the new labor, the new wisdom, the flight of despots and devils, the end of superstition, and be the first to worship Christmas on earth [Noel sur la terre]! The song of the heavens, the march of nations! Slaves we are, but let us not curse our lives!", in Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and Illuminations, trans, by Mark Trehorne, London, J.M. Dent, 1998.

(28.) Amy Taubin, "****," Who Is Andy Warhol? ed. Colin MacCabe with Mark Francis and Peter Wollen, London and Pittsburgh, British Film Institute and Andy Warhol Museum, 1997, p. 24.

(29.) Mekas, "Christmas on Earth: a note on ways of screening it," 1983. Collection Jonas Mekas.

(30.) Joan Rubin, p. 202; and Arthur Knight and Hollis Alpert, "The History of Sex in Cinema: A cinematic survey of the underground avant-garde,"Playboy, April 1967, p. 210.

(31.) Malanga, interview.

(32.) Quoted in Joan Rubin, p. 202.

(33.) Ibid. In fact, a copy of her script "Christmas on Earth Continued" is in the collection of the Kinsey Institute Library, Bloomington, Ind.

(34.) Mekas, "Notes on Some New Movies and Happiness," Film Culture 37, Summer 1965, pp. 16-20.

(35.) John Gruen, The New Bohemia: The Combine Generation, New York, Grosset and Dunlap, 1967, p. 104.

(36.) Mekas, "A Note on Barbara Rubin's Untitled." Barbara Rubin file, Anthology Film Archives. There is another short undated film, hand colored on clear leader, attributed to Rubin and catalogued at Anthology Film Archives as 5350. Its attribution has been contested by Rosebud Pettet, however, who claimed that Rubin never painted film. If by Rubin, it would add formal diversity to her small known output.

(37.) John Wilcock, "On the Road with the Exploding Plastic Inevitable," The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol, New York, Other Scenes, 1971, n.p.

(38.) Seymour Krim, "Andy Warhol's 'Velvet Underground': Shock Treatment for Psychiatrists," New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 14, 1966. For recent scholarship on Rubin's role in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, see Braden W. Joseph, "'My Mind Split Open': Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable," Grey Room 8, Summer 2002, pp. 80-107.