Raro Video presents the Andy Warhol Anthology. An 8 DVD box set which includes 11 films and accompanying books: issued in region-free PAL format, it comes with extensive bilingual notes, interviews, and bonus material accompanying the discs
ANDY WARHOL - 4 SILENT MOVIES
4 silent movies by Andy Warhol on 1 DVD from Raro Video (Italy)
Kiss
1963, USA, 50 minutes (34 mins at 24 fps for this selection of 13 “kisses”; the length of each “kiss” is 100 feet = approx. 3 minutes), black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
The “kisses of Naomi Levine” were presented for the first time at the Gramercy Arts Theater in September 1963, under the title Andy Warhol Serial. A clip of 14’ (Kiss Excerpt, cited in catalogue no. 4 of the Filmmaker’s Coop) was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1964. Catalogue no. 3 cites, between Eat and Blow Job, a Naomi and Rufus Kiss (30’).
In 1966 Warhol made two serigraphs on plexiglas from Kiss (56 x 30.5 cm.), the first in 6 copies, the second in 75 copies. In 1963, Warhol also made a serigraph on paper, “The Kiss”, from a frame of Tod Browning’s Dracula, 1931, starring Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler.
Director: Andy Warhol
Cast: Naomi Levine and Ed Sanders; Naomi Levine and Rufus Collins; Naomi Levine and Gerard Malanga; Baby Jane Holzer and John Palmer; Baby Jane Holzer and Gerard Malanga; John Palmer and Andrei Meyer; Escobar Marisol and Robert Indiana; Gerard Malanga and Mark Lancaster; Freddy Herko and Johnny Dodd; and also: Charlotte Gilbertson, Philip von Rensselaet, Pierre Restany
Blow Job
1964, USA, 41 minutes at 16 fps or 26’ at 24 fps, black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
Shot in the Winter 1963-64. First shown by the Film-makers’ Coop. at the Washington Square Art Gallery, 16 March 1964.
Director: Andy Warhol
Empire
1964, USA, 8 hours (60 mins at 24 fps included in this selection), black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
Shot on the night of 25 June 1964 from the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building. Production coordinator: Henry Romney; co-director: John Palmer; photography: Jonas Mekas (he was familiar with the Auricon camera – this is the first film Warhol made with the Auricon); premiere: organized by the Filmmakers’ Coop. at the City Hall Cinema, New York, 6 March 1965.
Director: Andy Warhol
Mario Banana
1964, USA, 3 minutes 30 seconds + 3 minutes 30 seconds, black and white and color, Digitally restored and remastered
Premiere: Los Angeles Filmmakers’ Festival of 1965 (where it was awarded).
Different versions of this film were shot, including one in color.
Director: Andy Warhol Cast: Mario Montez
# FEATURESIntroductions for all 4 shorts by Adriano Apra' (Fim Historian) and Bruno Di Marino (Media Critic) - in Italian with optional English subtitles
# 60 page booklet (text in English and Italian)
ANDY WARHOL: VINYL - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO
VINYL (1965)
65min 54sec (24 f/s), 16mm, sound, b&w.
Shot in the Factory one day in March (according to other sources, end of April-beginning of May) 1965.
Screenplay Ronald Tavel, freely inspired by A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
# Italian version and original English version with optional Italian subtitles
# Restored and digitally remastered with the supervision of the Andy Warhol Foundation and Adriano Aprà
Director : Andy Warhol
Screenplay: Ronald Tavel
Assistants: Bud Wirtschafter (cameraman), George Hampshire, Gilbert Tedeschi, Jennifer Burns, Roger Trudeau.
Lighting: Billy Linich (= Billy Name)
Music: Martha and the Vandellas (“Nowhere to Run”), The Kinks (“Tired of Waiting for You”)
Cast: Gerard Malanga (Victor), John D. MacDermott (the cop), Tosh Carrillo (the doctor), Robert Olivo [=Ondine] (Scum), Edie Sedgwick (the girl on the trunk), Larry Latreille (Pug), Jacques Potin; voice over Ronald Tavel
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO (1966)
64 minutes, 16mm, black and white
Original English Version
Director: Andy Warhol
Producer: Andy Warhol
Cinematography: Paul Morrissey
Cameraman: Andy Warhol
Music: The Velvet Underground & Nico
Cast: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Lou Reed, guitar; John Cale, viola and bass guitar; Sterling Morrison, guitar and bass guitar; Nico, maracas, tambourine); Ari Boulogne, Gerard Malanga, Billy Name, Stephen Shore, Andy Warhol, New York police agents
DVD FEATURES
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) - Italian version with optional English subtitles
# Interview with Ernesto Assante (La Repubblica) Italian version with optional English subtitles
# 84 page bilingual English/Italian book
ANDY WARHOL DOUBLE FEATURE: MY HUSTLER/ I A MAN (2 DVD SET)
MY HUSTLER - 66'mins 35secs (63mins 42secs at 25 fps), 16mm, sound, black & white
Premiere: Film-makers' Cinematheque, New York, October 1965; then, for the public, Hudson Theater, New York, June 1967 (with Mario Banana). Shot in September 1965, during the Labour Day weekend in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, NY, with an Auricon with 1200 ft. reels. During the first week at the Hudson Theater, the film which cost 4 or 5,000 dollars, made 30,000 dollars.
# Original Fullframe Version
# Original English & Italian Audio
# Removable Italian Subtitles
I AM MAN - 1967, 95mins (91mins 23secs at 25 fps),16mm, sound, color, Eastman Color
Shot in two parts. The first one was shot around the end of July 1967. The first scene to be shot was the one with Bettina Coffin in an artist's apartment situated between East 10th Street and Avenue A (where the scene with Ivy Nicolson is also shot); then the scene on the stairs of the Factory (Valerie Solanas), in a penthouse on Riverside Drive with a view of the Hudson River (Stephanie Graves) and in an unidentified apartment (Ingrid Superstar); about two months later, according to Tom Baker, the scenes with Ultra Violet, Nico and another girl were shot (maybe the one with Cynthia May or maybe the one included in the version with nine girls which was then cut). The film was shown for the first time in New York, at the Hudson Theatre, on August 24th 1967, in a version with six girls (99 minutes long, according to “Variety”); some time later, according to Tom Baker, this version was screened, at the Hudson Theatre, alternated with one with nine girls. In February 1968, a version with eight girls, which was 110 minutes long, was screened at the Cinematheque 16 in Los Angeles, later reduced at the end of the same year to the present one lasting 95 minutes.
DVD FEATURES
# Original Fullframe Version
# English Audio
# Removable Italian Subtitles
65 page bilingual English/Italian book
THE CHELSEA GIRLS [2 DVDS]
Andy Warhol's THE CHELSEA GIRLS released in a special edition 2 DVD + Book set
THE CHELSEA GIRLS, made up of 12 half-hour episodes, is the first of Warhol's experimental movies to become a critical and commercial success and to have broken through the confines of New York's underground world. It has an impact comparable to that of a Jean-Luc Godard movie.
It was made from June to September 1966 and shot live with meager resources. The scenes, as in all previous movies, were films in one take following the conviction that, if the camera was left pointed at interesting people something interesting would surely take place. There is no editing, a choice also determined by the kind of camera that was used by Warhol where the reel last 30 minutes and the sound is tapes directly on the film. This technique doesn't allow separation of the image and sound. THE CHELSEA GIRLS stars Angelina “Pepper” Davis, Eric Emerson, Mary Woronov, Gerard Malanga, Marie Menken, Bob “Ondine” Olivio, Patrick Fleming, Brigid Polk, Christian Aaron Boulogne, Mario Montez, Ed Hood, Albert Rene Ricard, Ingrid Superstar, Susan “Victor” Bottomly, Rona Page and Ari.
DVD FEATURES
DVD 1
# Philological edition on split screen as according to the instructions of the MoMA (Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art) and the Andy Warhol Foundation (2 episodes run side-by-side)
# English Audio
# Optional English or Italian Subtitles (Very helpful since much of the dialogue is difficult to hear)
DVD 2
# 'Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol' - Directed by Jonas Mekas (worth the price of admission alone!)
# "a videocosa" by Enrico Ghezzi (In Italian with English Subtitles
# Interview with Achille Bonito Oliva (In Italian with English Subtitles)
# Interview with Mario Zonta (In Italian with English Subtitles)
# Paul Morrissey interviews Jonas Mekas
Book - English and Italian text
THE NUDE RESTAURANT
For those who experienced them, like the people who write about those years in New York and who were close to Warhol’s universe, it is easy to remember that working days were inevitably followed by evenings spent in the restaurant. It was always the same one and it was always full of people. Old friends and superstars. Visiting guests or regular visitors could include all those who were part of Swinging London from a very young Mick Jagger, Anita Pallemberg, Keith Richard, Marianne Faithful, Nico, Jim Morrison, to artists such as Dalì and Duchamp and writers such as Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams - the list could be as long as a phone directory.
Sometimes William Burroughs would be there too. Conversations were both frivolous and serious. But often ideas were also created there, so it was almost inevitable that the restaurant became a film. The restaurant, “Max Kansas City”, has long gone out of business. Andy hasn’t been around for a long time either… but I don’t always remember that… It is 1967, when the war in Vietnam, endorsed by Kennedy, degenerates, bringing only destruction and death. The first movements are created, in particular on the West Coast, which strongly underline the uselessness and absurdity of the war. At Berkeley, the first large student demonstrations commence.
Gradually more people join in the protest against the horrific situation. Jane Fonda would become a leader and a symbol of the great peace movement. These distant protests cannot avoid reaching New York, they cannot be ignored by the Factory or the Lady of the Factory, Viva, the Jane Fonda of alternative cinema. During those same years the first hippie groups were created, “flower power”, unarmed troops that were also slightly more confused than the protest and fighting groups that were gradually expanding and which quickly reached Europe.
It was 1967 when Warhol, assisted as in other films by the loyal Paul Morrissey, made two versions of the same film, The Nude Restaurant, in just one day using a real restaurant with a greatly symbolic and prophetic name “The Mad Hatter” as a set. A version with an all-male cast was binned to make room for the one presented here and which had its premiere at the Hudson Theatre on 44th Street in New York, causing great controversy in the puritan America of those days, since all the actors are almost totally nude. The reviews which followed the release of the film were either destructive or excited depending on the spirit of that period. To quote just a few lines from a nasty critic of those days, Stephen Koch: “… a large group of men and just one woman are sitting naked in a restaurant because it is terribly trendy to be nude, considering the new pornography… They talk, and talk and talk and even if you try really hard to understand there is nothing interesting to hear… Miss Hoffman’s (Viva) exaggeratedly long confession about her Catholic upbringing and the information about the lewd priest are more about her own personal obsessions than the events themselves…
DVD FEATURES
# Original Full Frame Version
# English and Italian audio options
# Optional Italian subtitles
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) (in Italian with optional English subtitles)
LONESOME COWBOYS
This experimental western from cult icon Andy Warhol concerns nine people in a ghost town looking for love. Ramona Alvarez (Viva) and her perpetually stoned nurse (Mead) run into five gay cowboys led by Louis Waldon. They all want to have sex with a handsome drifter (Tom Hompertz), except for the transvestite sheriff (Francis Francine), who can't be bothered about anything but his outfit. Ramona is raped by the cowboys then has sex with Hompertz and wants to form a suicide pact in the afterglow. Hompertz wants no part of such a pact, however, and rides off into the sunset with another man (Eric Emerson)…
DVD FEATURES
# Original Full Frame Version
# English and Italian audio options
# Optional Italian subtitles
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) (Italian with English subtitles)
This box set includes 6 individual DVD cases (2 of which are double DVD cases) housed in a cardboard box.
ANDY WARHOL ANTHOLOGY 8-DVD BOX SET [11 FILMS]
ANDY WARHOL - 4 SILENT MOVIES
4 silent movies by Andy Warhol on 1 DVD from Raro Video (Italy)
Kiss
1963, USA, 50 minutes (34 mins at 24 fps for this selection of 13 “kisses”; the length of each “kiss” is 100 feet = approx. 3 minutes), black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
The “kisses of Naomi Levine” were presented for the first time at the Gramercy Arts Theater in September 1963, under the title Andy Warhol Serial. A clip of 14’ (Kiss Excerpt, cited in catalogue no. 4 of the Filmmaker’s Coop) was shown at the New York Film Festival in 1964. Catalogue no. 3 cites, between Eat and Blow Job, a Naomi and Rufus Kiss (30’).
In 1966 Warhol made two serigraphs on plexiglas from Kiss (56 x 30.5 cm.), the first in 6 copies, the second in 75 copies. In 1963, Warhol also made a serigraph on paper, “The Kiss”, from a frame of Tod Browning’s Dracula, 1931, starring Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler.
Director: Andy Warhol
Cast: Naomi Levine and Ed Sanders; Naomi Levine and Rufus Collins; Naomi Levine and Gerard Malanga; Baby Jane Holzer and John Palmer; Baby Jane Holzer and Gerard Malanga; John Palmer and Andrei Meyer; Escobar Marisol and Robert Indiana; Gerard Malanga and Mark Lancaster; Freddy Herko and Johnny Dodd; and also: Charlotte Gilbertson, Philip von Rensselaet, Pierre Restany
Blow Job
1964, USA, 41 minutes at 16 fps or 26’ at 24 fps, black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
Shot in the Winter 1963-64. First shown by the Film-makers’ Coop. at the Washington Square Art Gallery, 16 March 1964.
Director: Andy Warhol
Empire
1964, USA, 8 hours (60 mins at 24 fps included in this selection), black and white, Digitally restored and remastered
Shot on the night of 25 June 1964 from the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building. Production coordinator: Henry Romney; co-director: John Palmer; photography: Jonas Mekas (he was familiar with the Auricon camera – this is the first film Warhol made with the Auricon); premiere: organized by the Filmmakers’ Coop. at the City Hall Cinema, New York, 6 March 1965.
Director: Andy Warhol
Mario Banana
1964, USA, 3 minutes 30 seconds + 3 minutes 30 seconds, black and white and color, Digitally restored and remastered
Premiere: Los Angeles Filmmakers’ Festival of 1965 (where it was awarded).
Different versions of this film were shot, including one in color.
Director: Andy Warhol Cast: Mario Montez
# FEATURESIntroductions for all 4 shorts by Adriano Apra' (Fim Historian) and Bruno Di Marino (Media Critic) - in Italian with optional English subtitles
# 60 page booklet (text in English and Italian)
ANDY WARHOL: VINYL - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO
VINYL (1965)
65min 54sec (24 f/s), 16mm, sound, b&w.
Shot in the Factory one day in March (according to other sources, end of April-beginning of May) 1965.
Screenplay Ronald Tavel, freely inspired by A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
# Italian version and original English version with optional Italian subtitles
# Restored and digitally remastered with the supervision of the Andy Warhol Foundation and Adriano Aprà
Director : Andy Warhol
Screenplay: Ronald Tavel
Assistants: Bud Wirtschafter (cameraman), George Hampshire, Gilbert Tedeschi, Jennifer Burns, Roger Trudeau.
Lighting: Billy Linich (= Billy Name)
Music: Martha and the Vandellas (“Nowhere to Run”), The Kinks (“Tired of Waiting for You”)
Cast: Gerard Malanga (Victor), John D. MacDermott (the cop), Tosh Carrillo (the doctor), Robert Olivo [=Ondine] (Scum), Edie Sedgwick (the girl on the trunk), Larry Latreille (Pug), Jacques Potin; voice over Ronald Tavel
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO (1966)
64 minutes, 16mm, black and white
Original English Version
Director: Andy Warhol
Producer: Andy Warhol
Cinematography: Paul Morrissey
Cameraman: Andy Warhol
Music: The Velvet Underground & Nico
Cast: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Lou Reed, guitar; John Cale, viola and bass guitar; Sterling Morrison, guitar and bass guitar; Nico, maracas, tambourine); Ari Boulogne, Gerard Malanga, Billy Name, Stephen Shore, Andy Warhol, New York police agents
DVD FEATURES
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) - Italian version with optional English subtitles
# Interview with Ernesto Assante (La Repubblica) Italian version with optional English subtitles
# 84 page bilingual English/Italian book
ANDY WARHOL DOUBLE FEATURE: MY HUSTLER/ I A MAN (2 DVD SET)
MY HUSTLER - 66'mins 35secs (63mins 42secs at 25 fps), 16mm, sound, black & white
Premiere: Film-makers' Cinematheque, New York, October 1965; then, for the public, Hudson Theater, New York, June 1967 (with Mario Banana). Shot in September 1965, during the Labour Day weekend in Cherry Grove, Fire Island, NY, with an Auricon with 1200 ft. reels. During the first week at the Hudson Theater, the film which cost 4 or 5,000 dollars, made 30,000 dollars.
# Original Fullframe Version
# Original English & Italian Audio
# Removable Italian Subtitles
I AM MAN - 1967, 95mins (91mins 23secs at 25 fps),16mm, sound, color, Eastman Color
Shot in two parts. The first one was shot around the end of July 1967. The first scene to be shot was the one with Bettina Coffin in an artist's apartment situated between East 10th Street and Avenue A (where the scene with Ivy Nicolson is also shot); then the scene on the stairs of the Factory (Valerie Solanas), in a penthouse on Riverside Drive with a view of the Hudson River (Stephanie Graves) and in an unidentified apartment (Ingrid Superstar); about two months later, according to Tom Baker, the scenes with Ultra Violet, Nico and another girl were shot (maybe the one with Cynthia May or maybe the one included in the version with nine girls which was then cut). The film was shown for the first time in New York, at the Hudson Theatre, on August 24th 1967, in a version with six girls (99 minutes long, according to “Variety”); some time later, according to Tom Baker, this version was screened, at the Hudson Theatre, alternated with one with nine girls. In February 1968, a version with eight girls, which was 110 minutes long, was screened at the Cinematheque 16 in Los Angeles, later reduced at the end of the same year to the present one lasting 95 minutes.
DVD FEATURES
# Original Fullframe Version
# English Audio
# Removable Italian Subtitles
65 page bilingual English/Italian book
THE CHELSEA GIRLS [2 DVDS]
Andy Warhol's THE CHELSEA GIRLS released in a special edition 2 DVD + Book set
THE CHELSEA GIRLS, made up of 12 half-hour episodes, is the first of Warhol's experimental movies to become a critical and commercial success and to have broken through the confines of New York's underground world. It has an impact comparable to that of a Jean-Luc Godard movie.
It was made from June to September 1966 and shot live with meager resources. The scenes, as in all previous movies, were films in one take following the conviction that, if the camera was left pointed at interesting people something interesting would surely take place. There is no editing, a choice also determined by the kind of camera that was used by Warhol where the reel last 30 minutes and the sound is tapes directly on the film. This technique doesn't allow separation of the image and sound. THE CHELSEA GIRLS stars Angelina “Pepper” Davis, Eric Emerson, Mary Woronov, Gerard Malanga, Marie Menken, Bob “Ondine” Olivio, Patrick Fleming, Brigid Polk, Christian Aaron Boulogne, Mario Montez, Ed Hood, Albert Rene Ricard, Ingrid Superstar, Susan “Victor” Bottomly, Rona Page and Ari.
DVD FEATURES
DVD 1
# Philological edition on split screen as according to the instructions of the MoMA (Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art) and the Andy Warhol Foundation (2 episodes run side-by-side)
# English Audio
# Optional English or Italian Subtitles (Very helpful since much of the dialogue is difficult to hear)
DVD 2
# 'Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol' - Directed by Jonas Mekas (worth the price of admission alone!)
# "a videocosa" by Enrico Ghezzi (In Italian with English Subtitles
# Interview with Achille Bonito Oliva (In Italian with English Subtitles)
# Interview with Mario Zonta (In Italian with English Subtitles)
# Paul Morrissey interviews Jonas Mekas
Book - English and Italian text
THE NUDE RESTAURANT
For those who experienced them, like the people who write about those years in New York and who were close to Warhol’s universe, it is easy to remember that working days were inevitably followed by evenings spent in the restaurant. It was always the same one and it was always full of people. Old friends and superstars. Visiting guests or regular visitors could include all those who were part of Swinging London from a very young Mick Jagger, Anita Pallemberg, Keith Richard, Marianne Faithful, Nico, Jim Morrison, to artists such as Dalì and Duchamp and writers such as Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams - the list could be as long as a phone directory.
Sometimes William Burroughs would be there too. Conversations were both frivolous and serious. But often ideas were also created there, so it was almost inevitable that the restaurant became a film. The restaurant, “Max Kansas City”, has long gone out of business. Andy hasn’t been around for a long time either… but I don’t always remember that… It is 1967, when the war in Vietnam, endorsed by Kennedy, degenerates, bringing only destruction and death. The first movements are created, in particular on the West Coast, which strongly underline the uselessness and absurdity of the war. At Berkeley, the first large student demonstrations commence.
Gradually more people join in the protest against the horrific situation. Jane Fonda would become a leader and a symbol of the great peace movement. These distant protests cannot avoid reaching New York, they cannot be ignored by the Factory or the Lady of the Factory, Viva, the Jane Fonda of alternative cinema. During those same years the first hippie groups were created, “flower power”, unarmed troops that were also slightly more confused than the protest and fighting groups that were gradually expanding and which quickly reached Europe.
It was 1967 when Warhol, assisted as in other films by the loyal Paul Morrissey, made two versions of the same film, The Nude Restaurant, in just one day using a real restaurant with a greatly symbolic and prophetic name “The Mad Hatter” as a set. A version with an all-male cast was binned to make room for the one presented here and which had its premiere at the Hudson Theatre on 44th Street in New York, causing great controversy in the puritan America of those days, since all the actors are almost totally nude. The reviews which followed the release of the film were either destructive or excited depending on the spirit of that period. To quote just a few lines from a nasty critic of those days, Stephen Koch: “… a large group of men and just one woman are sitting naked in a restaurant because it is terribly trendy to be nude, considering the new pornography… They talk, and talk and talk and even if you try really hard to understand there is nothing interesting to hear… Miss Hoffman’s (Viva) exaggeratedly long confession about her Catholic upbringing and the information about the lewd priest are more about her own personal obsessions than the events themselves…
DVD FEATURES
# Original Full Frame Version
# English and Italian audio options
# Optional Italian subtitles
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) (in Italian with optional English subtitles)
LONESOME COWBOYS
This experimental western from cult icon Andy Warhol concerns nine people in a ghost town looking for love. Ramona Alvarez (Viva) and her perpetually stoned nurse (Mead) run into five gay cowboys led by Louis Waldon. They all want to have sex with a handsome drifter (Tom Hompertz), except for the transvestite sheriff (Francis Francine), who can't be bothered about anything but his outfit. Ramona is raped by the cowboys then has sex with Hompertz and wants to form a suicide pact in the afterglow. Hompertz wants no part of such a pact, however, and rides off into the sunset with another man (Eric Emerson)…
DVD FEATURES
# Original Full Frame Version
# English and Italian audio options
# Optional Italian subtitles
# Interview with Mario Zonta (Andy Warhol Foundation) (Italian with English subtitles)
This box set includes 6 individual DVD cases (2 of which are double DVD cases) housed in a cardboard box.
ANDY WARHOL ANTHOLOGY 8-DVD BOX SET [11 FILMS]
Details
Cat. number: AnthologyRVD 40123
Year: 2007
