The Chelsea Girls - this week at cinematheque

This week we say goodbye to the serial and look once again to the 1960s as Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls kicks off a month of multi-screen movies at the Chauvel Cinematheque.

MON. 9/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 1

USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

Chelsea Girls comprises twelve reels of film (the last four in colour) each running 35 minutes in a continuous unedited 'take' shot with a static camera but with sometimes frequent use of zoom. Each reel was supposedly shot in rooms in New York's Chelsea Hotel with Warhol Factory types, sometimes drug-dazed, more or less being themselves or acting out sketchily conceived roles. Warhol's film is both a document of the period and a film which implicitly has as its subject the nature of cinema and cinematic expression, from the role of the camera through the notion of stardom to the conventions of projecting and viewing the finished work. Chelsea Girls makes a transition from the aesthetic minimalism of Warhol's earlier films to the relatively more commercial movie-making of Lonesome Cowboys and Paul Morrisey's subsequent films. The cast includes Nico, Ari, Bob 'Ondine' Olivio, Bridget Polk, Ingrid Superstar, Ed Hood, Mario Montez, Eric Emerson, Mary Might, International Velvet, Marie Menken, and Gerard Malanga.

“The results are often spellbinding.” Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

NOTE: The film will be projected in a twin-screen format with sound from only one of the two reels on the screen and projection staggered to allow for reel changes. Due to the length of this film, the film will be screened in two parts over two weeks. As the film is non-narrative it is not necessary to see both parts, but it is recommended.

MON. 16/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 2

Chelsea Girls Pt. 2 USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

“In stripping the cinematic medium of its pretensions and decorations, Warhol has produced an art statement that is likely to be acceptable only to the very few. Whatever one's opinion of the merits of the films, it must surely be admitted that Warhol has finally forced a realignment of the purpose, place, and function of the artist, who is no longer solely a technician or a decorator, but is now strictly an idea man and director. Much of his subject matter is, in one way or another, the subject matter of the commercial artist; in this manner big business and the immediate past, probably the two most difficult things for the contemporary artist to come to terms with, become for Warhol both the content and the product of his art." Gregory Battcock, Art Journal