The Chelsea Girls - 16MM

Warhol’s epic double-screen masterpiece, the Gone With the Wind of New York’s ‘60s underground, was filmed throughout the summer of 1966. After shooting several films featuring his Superstars and friends, Warhol got the idea to unify all the pieces of these people’s lives by stringing them together as if they lived in different rooms of the Chelsea Hotel. Chelsea Girls, one of Warhol’s most ambitious and commercially successful films, is a brilliant example of the artist’s signature technique of assembling complete reels of unedited film in various ways. “In one film alone,” an early reviewer noted, “Warhol has sadism, masochism, whipping, transvestites, homos, prostitutes, a homosexual ‘Pope’, boredom, stunningly beautiful girls, depravity, humor, ‘psychedelics’, truth, honesty, liars, poseurs. . .” i.e. the whole wide world.
With Brigid Berlin (Brigid Polk), Susan Bottomly (International Velvet), Ari Boulogne, Ronnie Cutrone, Angelina “Pepper” Davis, Donnie, Eric Emerson, Patrick Fleming, Ed Hood, Gerard Malanga, Marie Menken, George Millaway, Mario Montez, Nico, Ondine, Ronna Page, Rene Ricard, Ingrid Superstar, Mary Woronov (Mary Might).

Special thanks to the Andy Warhol Museum