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The Chelsea Girls

The Chelsea Girls

Andy Warhol, The Chelsea Girls, 1966. Photo: Andy Warhol Museum.

Presented by REDCAT and Los Angeles Filmforum.

Presented as part of the Jack H. Skirball Series

THIS WILL SELL OUT!  BUY YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE.

Some died in lonely drug overdoses, some became controversial artists, some mysteriously disappeared , some had impressive careers in B-movies, some were faux-girls, exuding spectacular femininity (Mario Montez), some weren’t girls at all, but inspired drama queens (Ed Hood), flamboyant philosophers (Pope Ondine) or bisexual lads in love with music (Eric Emerson), photography (Gerard Malanga), and their own bodies. Forty-eight years after Chelsea Girls’ premiere, their bitchiness, exuberance, humor, and Edenic experimentation with drugs, sex and art explode on the split screen. On a Velvet Underground tune, these fragile divas of the 15-minute fame--Nico, Brigid Berlin, Ingrid Superstar, Mary Woronov--are forever young, glamorous, iconic and radically transgressive.

Print courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art.

Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

 $11.00 [members $9.00]

“Andy Warhol’s infamous double-projected dive into a demimonde he created is exhilarating, one of the defining moments in the artistic history of the decade… Warhol's subtle sadism is matched frame for frame by the unrepentant narcissism of his superstars.”

Bright Light Film Journal

“I began to watch on second viewing the inside edge rather than one screen or the other. Nico’s child next to the looming Ondine; the moody purplish detail of the Malanga scene next to a corner of the static loaded bed. The inside edge delineates another story, another interaction of characters, and more than any other part contains the condensed imagery, emphasizing how the image mashes up against the edge and is restrained from spilling out. This is a familiar concept in painting, if somewhat unfashionable in that area at the moment. To see it visualized to such an extreme in the cinema is a new experience.” – Yvonne Rainer, Arts Magazine

 “The Chelsea Girls changed my life… What [does Warhol see in it] that so comforts him? He sees – we see – two reels projected in tandem. Two together as one. The ideal, the very definition of the couple. But The Chelsea Girls uncouple.  Although the film’s cardinal number is two – two reels, two events at a time (though slightly staggered – the two come together serendipitously, indiscriminately – one might say even promiscuously. And doubling readily becomes multiple: three characters, four, five, and more; now this story, now that one, now another, now that one again. Or it can be single: the ‘Hanoi Hannah’ sequence playing on both screens simultaneously, or the left-hand screen’s ‘Colored Lights on Past’ group, prominently featuring Eric Emerson, seeming to be the spectators of Eric’s narcissistic self-exploration and monologue on the right-had screen. Still, the significant relationships in The Chelsea Girls are mostly those that are created by chance encounters between the two screens: coincidences, resonances, dissonances, alignments, syncopations, rhymes, and contrasts: black-and-white juxtaposed with color, a predominantly dark reel juxtaposed with a predominantly light one, a pair or a group on one reel, a lone man or women on the other…”

– Douglas Crimp, Our Kind of Movies

The SF Cinematheque did a nice interview with Jerome Hiler, the original projectionist of The Chelsea Girls.  Check it out at http://vimeo.com/108790392

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was a remarkably prolific filmmaker, creating more than 100 movies – including Sleep (1963), Blow Job (1964), Empire (1964), Vinyl (1965), My Hustler (1965), Bike Boy (1967), Nude Restaurant (1967)… – and nearly 500 film portraits known as Screen Tests. He withdrew his films from circulation in the early 1970s, and it was only after his death in 1987 that they began to be restored and shown again – with the creation of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Andy Warhol The Chelsea Girls 1966 cAWM 2 smaller

Andy Warhol, The Chelsea Girls, 1966. Photo: Andy Warhol Museum.

The Chelsea Girls

(1966, 16mm, double-screen projection, approx. 210 min.)

Directed by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey.

Produced by Andy Warhol

Written by Ronald Tavel and Andy Warhol

Starring: Nico, Brigid Berlin (AKA Brigid Polk), Ondine, Gerard Malanga, Eric Emerson, Mary Woronov, Mario Montez, Ed Hood, Ingrid Superstar, International Velvet, Marie Menken, René Ricard, Patrick Fleming, Angelina “Pepper” Davis.

Music: The Velvet Underground

Cinematography: Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey