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Photo: Gretchen Berg. ©2006
Photo: Gretchen Berg. ©2006

ANDY WARHOL: A DOCUMENTARY FILM
Ric Burns’s Epic Portrait Explores the Life and Times
of the Ground-breaking Artist

“Smart, scholarly. An entirely absorbing… revelatory portrait of a brilliant talent driven to greatness by an inner chorus of demons and angels!”
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Billy Name/OvoWorks, Inc.
Billy Name/OvoWorks, Inc.

 

“Warhol and his entourage redefined painting, sculpture, film, music and celebrity at his Factory workspace-playroom. Burns makes good use of archival footage, including clips from rarely screened Factory films, as well as virtuosic commentary from critics Dave Hickey and Wayne Koestenbaum.”
– Tom Beer, Time Out NY

“Hypnotic, powerful and revealing! Burns reclaims Warhol as not just a great artist but also a shaper of history - an unlikely visionary who was instrumental in sculpting the times in which he lived.”
– New York Magazine

“Opts for an unusually erudite roster of biographers, critics, and curators. Even the big names pressed into service are brainy art stars: Laurie Anderson narrates and Jeff Koons reads Andy’s voice. The result is an intellectual history of Warhol… Burns argues for a cogitating, agitating Warhol: deep thinker, cultural barometer, and world changer.”
– Ed Halter, Village Voice

"*** 1/2[3 ½ STARS]
– Gene Seymour, Newsday

“Consistently compelling and required viewing for anyone remotely interested in pop culture. We need all four hours, and even more, to understand the man who so prophetically divided the world into 15-minute increments.”

– Elizabeth Weitzman, Daily News

“Directed by Ric Burns and co-written with James Sanders (the same team that brought us New York), this excellent film… promises to be Mr. Burns’s most contentious! His is a thorough, engaging, and thoughtful production.”
– Daniel Kunitz, The New York Sun

Ric Burns’s 4-hour, epic ANDY WARHOL: A DOCUMENTARY FILM, is a portrait of one of the 20th century’s most influential, controversial, and paradoxically mystifying artists. Warhol, born in 1928, died in 1987 at age 58. As a newcomer to New York in the 1950s, he worked in fashion and advertising, illustrating shoes for I. Miller. His earliest paintings, inspired by advertising, reproduced Campbell soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, Superman comics and other popular iconography. With peers Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Claes Oldenburg, Warhol pioneered the Pop Art Movement, conflating high and low culture. As a painter, filmmaker, author, world-class shopper and pop world personality, his enigmatic, irreverent style embraced junkies and socialites, waifs and sirens, hustlers and movie stars alike. Andy Warhol was a master image-maker. So it is fitting that Ric Burns should draw extensively on rare archival materials, many of them shot by Warhol himself, from the heyday of his fame in the ’60s and ‘70s. His superstars and proteges Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ondine, Gerard Malanga and Candy Darling, among others, are all here larger than life. And then there are Warhol’s controversial screen-tests of such celebrities as Bob Dylan, Dennis Hopper, Susan Sontag, Salvador Dali and a host of others, recorded at his legendary Factory headquarters.

Narrated by Laurie Anderson. Featuring interviews with Irving Blum, Bob Colacello, Donna DeSalvo, Dave Hickey, Stephen Koch, Jeff Koons, Wayne Koestenbaum, Paul Morrissey, George Plimpton, John Richardson, Ronald Tavel, John Warhola, and others.

2006 • 4 Hours • Steeplechase Films
Each show will have one 15-minute intermission

 

Andy Warhol lights Edie Sedgwick's cigarette on the set of one of his films. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Andy Warhol lights Edie Sedgwick's cigarette on the set of one of his films. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

This presentation is generously underwritten
by Goldman Sachs.
Goldman Sachs.

 

Links:

For sale at AMAZON:
ANDY WARHOL: 365 TAKES from The Andy Warhol Museum Collection  Sale Price: $26.01 tax included [$ 24.00 plus tax]
ANDY WARHOL: 365 TAKES

from The Andy Warhol Museum Collection

Questions/Comments? E-mail Film Forum. Box Office: 212-727-8110. Film Forum is located at 209 W Houston Street, between 6th Avenue & Varick, in New York City. Independent premieres at Film Forum are selected and programmed by Karen Cooper and Mike Maggiore. Repertory screen is programmed by Bruce Goldstein. (Schedule subject to change). © 2006, The Moving Image, Inc. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without permission. Website Manager: Richard J. Hutchins. This page was last updated on September 19, 2006