Chelsea Girls, Remastered
The Andy Warhol Classic Returns
Andy Warhol was never what one would consider a “mainstream artist,” though he is easily one of the most popular avant-garde creators of his era, and, indeed, of all time. Warhol was a cultural icon, and the personification of New York City‘s radical, provocative, artistic sensibilities.
One of his most famous films is Chelsea Girls, a visually stunning series of half-hour vignettes which are projected in split-screen, juxtaposing disparate and dissonant images against each other. The entire film is split this way, and it is always shown from two separate projectors, with the individual reels being switched out by the projectionist, the final artist who influences the way the film is delivered to the viewer. Like most of Warhol’s movies, Chelsea Girls has never been officially released on home video in the United States (there exists an Italian DVD version, though it is extremely rare and of questionable visual quality), and thus can only be seen in theaters.
The New York Museum of Modern Art is one of the only institutions which owns a copy of the original film reels, and it often shows the film. For a series of screenings in early May, however, New York audiences were in for a surprise: a full digital restoration. The transfer is stunning, and elevates Chelsea Girls to its former glory; not the dirty remnants of a fifty-year old experiment, but a restored art film, devoid of technical distractions.
The restoration of the film comes alongside a book, Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls, which features over 300 pages of digital stills from the film, a complete transcript of the script, detailed notes on the production of the movie, and an in-depth essay from director – and professed Warhol protege – Gus Van Sant. All this, plus a forward from Rajendra Roy, the Chief Curator of Film at MoMA.
Though it may be sacrilege to some, we can’t help but hope that this digital restoration could lead to an eventual Blu ray home video release. In the meantime, keep an eye on the MoMA schedule to see when Chelsea Girls returns to screens.
