“In the '60s and early '70s Andy Warhol made films which redefined for many the precepts of cinema and the narrative form. His rarely-screened The Chelsea Girls is perhaps Warhol's most incisive and technically ambitious film project. Spanning a double screen and three hours, The Chelsea Girls takes place in the (in)famous Chelsea Hotel in New York. There is an eclectic entourage of residents and visitors - artists, actors, junkies gays, straights, a priest, a mother. The fragile and the hardened enact a series of non-related non-events - conversing, sitting around, confronting, crying, staring, giggling, haranguing, turning on, having sex.... Warhol has assembled these vignettes to fabricate a complexly structured underground vision. What he has achieved is awesome, painful, and sometimes humorous, what one critic described as ‘Narcissus in Hades.'
“‘I feel I'm very much a part of my times, of my culture, as much a part of it as rockets and television.' --Andy Warhol.
“The Chelsea Girls is a panorama of pain, terror, and desperation unfiltered, undiluted. Warhol has constructed a microcosm which reflects the human condition in America's Great Society - a spirit harboring alienation, boredom, fear, anger, and the dissolution of the sensual. When watching the characters drift from one room to the next, one screen to the other, one forgets that they were cast in predetermined roles. From the Pope to the drug addict, the queen to the naif, there is a naturalness suggesting they are portraying themselves. Actions and attitudes are articulated by a hypnotic visual scheme of saturated color washes, a prowling camera, and a dual soundtrack which alternates with the (in)activity on the screens.” --L.A. Thielen.
Ondine, who introduces tonight's film, plays the part of the Pope in Chelsea Girls, the most talked-about role in the film. A gregarious and witty personality, Ondine made his acting debut in Andy Warhol's Factory.

( Heat (7:40 PM) and Trash (9:35 PM) substituted)