These films explore Alice Neel's leftist bohemianism: from the Communist cultural front of the 1930s to the Beats to queer communities in the 1960s.

Neel's commitment to realism as a mode to capture suffering, poverty and oppression was marked by a belief that representing those conditions could assist in re-making the world. Pie in the Sky (1934) involved members of the Group Theater, including Elia Kazan, and captured the dynamic between the reality of the Depression, and daily fantasies of success and pleasure.

Steiner, like Neel, bridged the gap between 1930s communist culture and 1950-1960s bohemia. Flaming Creatures (1963) is a classic of American queer experimental cinema. While the Communist culture of the 1930s suffered from the impact of McCarthyism, those forms of censorship laid the ground for the obscenity charges taken out against Smith in the 1960s. Paired together we can begin to picture the social and political landscapes Neel journeyed through in her career.