Ronald Tavel

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

Mary Jordan

Jack Smith, Nayland Blake

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Warhol's Cinema 1963-1968: Mirror for the Sixties

Keith Griffiths

Andy Warhol, Brigid Berlin

Documentary on Andy Warhol's cinema of the sixties, made for Channel 4 in association with The Factory, MOMA and the Whitney Museum of Art and in collaboration with Simon Field.

Kitchen

Ronald Tavel, Andy Warhol

Ronald Tavel, Elecktrah

Instructed by Warhol to write a vehicle for Edie Sedgwick in a “completely white” setting, scenarist Ronald Tavel created one of Warhol’s most iconic films. Here a group of performers of all stripes – the sink and litter basket receive equal billing to the human actors – are forced into Warhol and Tavel’s cruelly comical theatre of the absurd. Inside this cramped domestic space, boredom, confusion and a sense of existential dread hang heavy in the air. Warhol and Tavel transform the modern 1960s kitchen – replete with the latest gadgets and conveniences – into a chaotic laboratory for self-creation and interpersonal conflict.

Screen Test #2

Ronald Tavel, Andy Warhol

Mario Montez, Ronald Tavel

Warhol and scenarist Ronald Tavel offer a brutal vision of the Hollywood casting couch with this record of ingenue Mario Montez performing a humiliating auditions for a dictatorial, unseen director.

Harlot

Andy Warhol

Mario Montez, Billy Name

Jean Harlow-lookalike Harlot (Mario Montez), Gerard Malanga, Philip Fagan, and Carol Koshinskie (with a cat) sit in a room eating bananas as the off-screen voices of Billy Name, Ronald Tavel, and Harry Fainlight discuss various topics.

Screen Test #1

Ronald Tavel, Andy Warhol

Mario Montez, Susan Sontag

Ronald Tavel taunts Philip Fagan, who lacks the verbal dexterity to counter the clever spider’s web of words that Ronald Tavel weaves to ensnare him, so that Fagan’s only response is to refuse to respond and stare silently off-screen, turning the screen test into a strange form of psychodrama.

Screen Test #4

Ronald Tavel, Andy Warhol

A series of Andy Warhol’s screen tests, focusing on an actor’s face for 4-5 mins.

The Life of Juanita Castro

Andy Warhol

Marie Menken, Elecktrah

A playwright taunts a number of actors into improvising a truly ridiculous but subtlely meaningful meditation on Fidel Castro and his family.

Hedy

Andy Warhol

Mario Montez, Mary Woronov

Egotistical faded star Hedy Lamarr visits a plastic surgeon to be transformed into the "14-year-old girl" she believes herself to be. She is then caught shoplifting by Mary Woronov and is put on trial, with Tavel as the judge and her five ex-husbands the jury. Hedy remains self-centered and detached throughout, posing and primping and bursting out renditions of "I Feel Pretty" and "Young at Heart."

Andy Warhol Screen Tests

Andy Warhol

Eric Andersen, Paul America

The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects were captured in stark relief by a strong key light, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film at 24 frames per second. The resulting two-and-a-half-minute film reels were then screened in 'slow motion' at 16 frames per second.