Nat Finkelstein with actress Misha Sedgwick

NAT FINKELSTEIN, 1933-2009
Nat Finkelstein, 76, Brooklyn-born photographer and photojournalist who intensively documented Andy Warhol’s Factory during 1964-67, died on Oct. 2, 2009. After retiring from photography in 1968, he exhibited his work extensively from the late 1980s to the present, with shows most recently at Tate Modern (2000), Wooster Gallery 2003) and the Cracow Institute of Art (2004). His books included The Andy Warhol Index, compiled in 1968 with Warhol himself, plus Girlfriends (1991), Merry Monsters (1993) and Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967 (2000).

Nat Finkelstein took many gorgeous photographs of Edie in her time as a Warhol Superstar. Most of photographs can be seen in Edie: Factory Girl, a book authored by David Dalton and Nat Finkelstein

http://www.natfinkelstein.com/photos/warhol/edie/index.htm

In the youtube excerpts of 'Girl on Fire' titled "One Night Jag,"  there is a segment that features fragments of the film that was projected for the play 'Lulu,' in which (as you probably already know) Edie had been the star in the projections as Lulu, filmed by Richard Leacock.

You can read more about the projection and the play at Richard Leacock's website. And you can also learn more about 'Lulu' by reading page 352 from the Edie: American Girl book.


from the youtube video excerpt


from Richardleacock.com


from the Edie: American Girl book


also, the youtube excerpts are the only new information, if anything, from the documentary "Girl on Fire."

If you haven't seen this yet, here is the unseen director's cut. Not the one featured on the DVD.















































What did you think about this version in comparison to the DVD version, or by chance you've seen the theateratical version.

Mary Woronov, Callie Angell, John Waters and Vincent Fremont
at "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" at the Wexner Center

View of the Filmscape section of the "Andy Warhol Other Voices Other Rooms"
exhibition when it was at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm
(Photo: Albin Dahlström/Scenography: Chezwitz & Roseapple)

The Wexner Centre in Ohio has announced some of the events planned in conjunction with their "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition which opens on September 13, 2008. On October 3rd they will be hosting a "Remembering Andy" panel with film director John Waters and Vincent Fremont. Fremont was head of Warhol's Video Dept. (along with Michael Netter) and produced Warhol's various television series as well as co-producing/directing what is probably the best Warhol-related documentary made in the past ten years or so - Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story.

On November 14th and 15th the Wexner Center will be hosting an international symposium on Warhol's work and his continuing influence which will include Warhol star Mary Woronov, Warhol scholar Callie Angell and exhibition curator Eva Meyer-Hermann in addition to panelists yet to be announced.

Other events include Robert Forster playing music by the Velvet Underground on September 13th, a late night party (in "Andyland") on November 8th and the screening of the Ric Burns documentary, Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film on November 2nd.

Additional events are currently being planned.
The website for the centre is at: http://www.wexarts.org.

A version of the "Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" exhibition will also run at the the Hayward Gallery in London from October 8, 2008 to January 11, 2009. Events are currently being planned in conjunction with the London exhibition and will be posted here as soon as they are confirmed. The website for the Hayward is at: http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts.

"Andy Warhol: Other Voices Other Rooms" is a traveling exhibition curated by Eva Meyer-Hermann in conjunction with the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

 

LAST WORD...
Coming Up For Air

                   for Edie

The face that grows out from the magazine
covers some simple indication
that long earrings are coming
back into fashion
At the parties that once were
beginning over
night in the city
limits, and the surprise
package or whatever explains the false
hood of logic to keep us
guessing at the eventual sun
rise, brings me home
in the film of our favorite soft
drink starring you.

                      Gerard Malanga

A live film with bad coffee, nervous breakdowns, wild parties and modern hairstyles.

"If tomorrow I find somebody who is pretty much like me and I put her here to sing, she can be Nico while I go and do something else."   Nico

Gob Squad's Kitchen takes one of Andy Warhol's films, 'Kitchen', as its starting point. Nothing much happens in the film yet it somehow encapsulates the hedonistic experimental energy of the swinging sixties. Learning lines was considered 'old fashioned' so the actors just hang around. Sex, drugs and wild parties are referred to but nothing in particular takes place. As Edie Sedgwick, one of the film's stars, says 'I live my part too – only I can't figure out what my part is in this movie.' Gob Squad set themselves the task of reconstructing 'Kitchen', despite the fact that none of them have seen it as the film is unavailable for viewing these days. How can they get it just right? How do they know if they're going wrong? How did people dance in 1965? What did they talk about? Had feminism happened? Or was it yet to begin? Gob Squad's Kitchen becomes a journey back in time and back to the future again. A quest for the original, the authentic, the here and now, the real me, the real you, the hidden depths beneath the shiny surfaces of modern life.

Premiere  30 march 2007 at Volksbühne im Prater, Berlin /D

source: http://www.gobsquad.com/currentsubpage.php?id_project=34

What are your thoughts on seeing the movie 'Factory Girl?'

 

 

THE REAL EDIE SEDGWICK
MARCH 31-APRIL 8, 2007


Edie Sedgwick was downtown New York's "It girl" of 1965, when she was inseparable from Andy Warhol; they were "the king of Pop and his star." Sedgwick appeared in nearly all of Warhol's films that year. "Edie was incredible on camera—just the way she moved," said Warhol. "She was all energy. She didn't know what to do with it when it came to living her life, but it was wonderful to film."

All films are 16mm, and directed by Andy Warhol, unless noted. All films by Andy Warhol are from The Museum of Modern Art.


Poor Little Rich Girl
Saturday, March 31, 2:00 p.m.

1965, 67 mins. A two-reel documentary portrait; in the first reel, out of focus, Edie does her morning routine, applying make-up and exercising. The second reel, in focus, feels like a revelation: Edie smokes pot, tries on clothes, and talks with an off-screen Chuck Wein.


Restaurant
Saturday, March 31, 3:30 p.m.

1965, 34 mins. Edie Sedgwick and friends drink and talk as they await a meal.
Followed by Screen Test Reel #10 1964-6, 40 mins. This reel of Warhol's Factory screen tests includes Edie Sedgwick, Jane Holzer, Lou Reed, John Ashbery, Jonas Mekas, and Paul Morrissey.


Vinyl
Saturday, March 31, 5:00 p.m.

1965, 70 mins. Warhol's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, filmed in a corner of the Factory, stars Gerard Malanga as Alex. But Edie Sedgwick, a non-speaking extra, steals the show.


Space
Saturday, March 31, 6:30 p.m.

1965, 70 mins. Warhol's constantly moving camera roams around its characters, in a mélange of talking, food fights, and folk singing.
Preceded by Match Girl 1966, 25 mins. Directed by Andrew Meyer. Sedgwick is mythologized by Vivian Kurz, who plays the self-destructive "Match Girl" in this allegorical film, narrated by Warhol.


Outer and Inner Space
Double-Screen Projection
Sunday, April 1, 3:00 p.m.and 6:00 p.m.

1965, 70 mins. In this split-screen extravaganza, Sedgwick smokes and speaks about subjects including outer space, medication, and her family while seated next to her image on a television monitor.
Preceded by Lupe 1965, 36 mins. Loosely based on the planned suicide of Lupe Velez, this film, presented in its original double-screen format, shows Sedgwick as she listens to music, dances, plays with a kitten, takes pills, and eats supper.


Kitchen
Saturday, April 7, 2:00 p.m.

1965, 70 mins. Sedgwick applies make-up, exercises her legs, is seduced by Mickey Trudeau, and discusses coffee. Written as a showcase for Sedgwick, Ronald Tavel's situational and episodic script was described by Warhol as "illogical, without motivation or character-completely ridiculous."
Preceded by Restaurant 1965, 34 mins. Edie Sedgwick and friends drink and talk as they await a meal.


Afternoon
Saturday, April 7, 4:00 p.m.

1965, 105 mins. Made from footage that was cut from Chelsea Girls at Edie Sedgwick's request, Afternoon is part of Warhol's intended "Poor Little Rich Girl" saga, along with Restaurant and Face.


Beauty #2
Saturday, April 7, 6:30 p.m.

1965, 70 mins. In her most complex, playful performance, Sedgwick flirts in bed with Gino Piserchio—and the camera—while responding to jealous insults from an off-screen Chuck Wein; Gerard Malanga looms by the bed, watching.
Preceded by Poem Posters 1967, 24 mins. Directed by Charles Henri Ford. Sedgwick is the life of the party in this priceless record of a star-studded art gallery opening, with appearances by William Burroughs, Jayne Mansfield, and Jack Smith.


Horse
Sunday, April 8, 4:30 p.m.

1965, 105 min. Sedgwick had a small part in this Western parody, her first Warhol film, which does indeed star a horse. The film is an important transition in Warhol's move towards ironic treatment of Hollywood genres.


Ciao! Manhattan
Sunday, April 8, 6:30 p.m.

1972, 84 mins. 35mm. Directed by John Palmer and David Weisman. Sedgwick died just weeks after making this quasi-biographical film, which combines footage from her Factory days with scenes of "Susan Superstar" looking back on the ruins of her life.
Preceded by fragment from Lulu 1967, 8 mins., video. Directed by Richard Leacock. U.S. Premiere. This expressionistic footage of Sedgwick was filmed for an opera.




http://www.movingimage.us/site/screenings/pages/2007/index_edie_sedgwick.html

www.awalkintothesea.com

In 1965, Danny Williams was living at a fast pace. He dropped out of Harvard against his family's wishes and moved to Manhattan to begin a film career. There he edited two films for Albert and David Maysles. He became a fixture at the Warhol Factory, fell in love with Andy Warhol and moved in with Andy and his mother. He also made over 20 films and designed the groundbreaking Velvet Underground/ Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI) light show.

1966 proved a more difficult year for Danny. Right before the EPI national tour, Warhol ended their affair. Three months away from New York and a growing dependence on amphetamines increased Danny's anxiety. After a Variety review called Danny the "mastermind" of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable show, Factory members accused him of trying to take credit for Warhol's work and maneuvered for his ouster.

After the tour ended in July, Danny went home to his family in Massachusetts. He brought with him a wooden box filled with amphetamine-fueled journals, lighting diagrams, personal effects and letters. His only other bag was a shaving kit filled with drugs.  After a family meal, he left in his mother's car. He was never seen again.

Thirty-four years later, just after the turn of the millennium his niece, director Esther Robinson, took a job as Program Director at a foundation funded and housed by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts

One day that summer, her grandmother Nadia paid her a visit at work. On meeting the staff of the Warhol Foundation. Nadia casually mentioned that her son, Danny Williams, had lived with Warhol and his mother and then mysteriously disappeared. A stunned silence filled the room. Esther was urgently told: "You need to speak with Callie Angell right away."

While archiving the Warhol collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Ms. Angell had stumbled upon a strange set of 20 experimental silent films. Shot on 16 mm black-and-white stock, they featured Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, The Velvet Underground and other well-known Warhol subjects. They were also dramatically different from Warhol's films; highly stylized, clearly personal, and quite obviously conceived by someone other than Warhol. They were all marked "Danny Williams," and, according to Ms. Angell, were "extraordinary."

Believing these films might hold the key to the mystery surrounding her uncle's abbreviated life, Esther asked MOMA to return them to her family. As she battled a resistant MOMA bureaucracy, she began researching her uncle's life in New York City. Frustrated by the scarcity of references to Danny in books about the 60's Warhol factory, Esther was intrigued when her grandmother gave her Danny's box of papers and journals. They were filled with clues about art-making and Factory infighting.

Curious about how little was said about Danny both by family and Factory members she began to make a film about her uncle's last year. In interviews with her family, she started to tease out the story behind his disappearance, his complex relationship to his family and their unspoken fears. When MoMA finally released the films, the footage was every bit as remarkable as promised: luminous, intimate, and revealing. A new question emerged: how was this young talent dropped from the historic record?

Esther then started tracking down and interviewing surviving Warhol Factory members. Surprisingly intimate, these interviews began to dismantle the mythmaking machine and allow a deeper examination of the human fragility on which the Warhol empire was built.

A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory is the story of her search to uncover the facts behind her uncle's disappearance and tragically shortened life. It is the story of an extraordinary talent abandoned by two dysfunctional families; one upright and traditional, the other bohemian and legendary.  It is a story of abandonment by history itself. And it is a journey into a sea of family, missing histories, and the failings of memory.