The Velvet Underground finally ventures outside the New York bubble when the band visits Los Angeles in 1966. While these points are (hopefully) familiar to anyone who has studied Warhol and his scene, they deserve repeating considering how often the Factory is romanticized. Of course, Nico got the last laugh and proved herself to be far more than a muse. (“The group needed something beautiful to counteract the kind of screeching ugliness they were trying to sell,” Factory filmmaker Paul Morrissey once said). That attitude inspired Warhol to add an attractive German singer and actress named Nico to the band, against Reed’s wishes. But the Factory’s emphasis on appearance, according to film critic Amy Taubin, who posed for Warhol, created a “damaging” environment in which women were celebrated for their outward image, not necessarily their talent. Warhol saw the band as a vehicle to combine music, art, and film into one big multimedia extravaganza and dreamed up the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a series where the Velvets played alongside dancers, performance artists, video projections, and a spectacular light show. The result is profoundly poetic: As Reed’s sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, describes her brother’s unsettled youth, a 20-something Reed gazes back, staring into the void of his own discomfort. The most poignant use of archival footage comes via Warhol’s screen tests, the silent video portraits in which subjects were asked to sit still and not blink. A curated crash course in mid-’60s art history, the film returns the band to its original fine art context. The frequent use of split-screen places new interviews with Cale, Tucker, and others in conversation with the work of contemporaries like photographer Stephen Shore, godfather of American avant-garde cinema Jonas Mekas, and the “ daddy” of minimalist music, La Monte Young. There’s so much to see here, with Haynes’ team reportedly licensing two-and-a-half hours of moving images for a two-hour film. The Velvet Underground solves this problem by utilizing other artwork from the era. There are clips of members lounging around the Factory and plenty of photos, but the band was rarely filmed performing. Warhol, who served as VU’s early manager and benefactor, was an obsessive documentarian of the world around him, and yet very little traditional footage of the band exists. This approach was partially out of necessity. Instead, he uses them as a springboard to create a moving visual tribute to New York’s experimental art scene of the 1960s. But for the most part, Haynes is unconcerned with capturing a definitive vision of the Velvet Underground. The film follows a relatively chronological narrative, beginning with the origin stories of VU’s core lineup (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker), escalating with the release of 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, and concluding with the band’s dissolution and Reed’s solo career in the early ’70s. His 1987 short Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story used Barbie dolls to paint a portrait of the tragic pop singer, 1998’s Velvet Goldmine put a Citizen Kane spin on the ’70s glam-rock scene (with details cribbed from Bowie and Bolan), and 2007’s I’m Not There posed the unlikely question: What if six famous actors channeled different sides of Bob Dylan to make the most interesting biopic ever? The Velvet Underground is not so blatantly deconstructivist. The Bardavon/UPAC film series is sponsored by Marshall & Sterling, Herzogs, Rondout Savings Bank and The Upstate Coalition for a Fairgame.Haynes has an impressive track record of making provocative films that cut through the mystique of musical icons. It will be up for auction to benefit the Bardavon. Donated by Sterling’s widow and longtime Poughkeepsie resident Martha Morrison. In addition the lobby will feature an Andy Warhol themed photo op plus, on display, a psychedelic outfit worn by Velvet guitarist Sterling Morrison in the above photo. on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ take place 30 minutes before each film and are made possible by the New York Theatre Organ Society (NYTOS). “Haynes appears to have vacuumed up every last photograph and raw scrap of home-movie and archival footage of the band that exists and stitched it all into a coruscating document that feels like a time-machine kaleidoscope.” This brand-new Todd Haynes documentary explores the multiple threads that converged to bring together one of the most influential bands in rock and roll. Proof of vaccination is required for this event (see below) Film: The Velvet Underground (2021) Presented with Upstate Films
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