News

Paul Morrissey, the filmmaker who was a business partner and collaborator of Andy Warhol’s, died Monday, Oct. 29. He was 86.

The Andy Warhol Museum confirmed Morrissey’s death in a statement shared on social media. Per The New York Times, Morrissey’s archivist, Michael Chaiken, said the filmmaker died in a Manhattan hospital from pneumonia.

“Morrissey worked on almost every film Warhol made from 1965 – 1974, working as a soundman and lighting supervisor and receiving credits as director and executive producer,” the Warhol Museum said. “He directed the films Flesh, Trash, and...

Paul Morrissey, the avant-garde filmmaker who worked on Andy Warhol movies including Chelsea Girls, Flesh, Trash and others who also managed The Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s, died Monday. He was 86.

His archivist Michael Chaiken told The New York Times that Morrissey died of pneumonia in a Manhattan hospital.

Morrissey collaborated with Warhol on several ultralow-budget features focused on the NYC subculture, starting with 1965’s My Hustler through 1974’s Blood for Dracula aka Andy Warhol’s Dracula. Their experimental movies — on which Morrissey often served in roles also including cinematographer and editor — often featured non-pro actors including Joe Dallesandro and Candy Darling and generally were ad-libbed rather than scripted.

Their biggest commercial success — a relative term — was with Trash, the 1970 pic starring Dallesandro as and junkie gigolo and Holly Woodlawn as his wife. Other Morrissey-Warhol films include 1968’s Lonesome Cowboys and 1972’s Heat and Women in Revolt. The duo...

One evening this past spring, a varied collection of individuals assembled on a dead-end street in Queens, dressed to the nines. Among them were high-fashion models, up-and-coming artists, established rockers, and a number of plus-ones who had no clue what they were getting into. Each member of the flock had received an enigmatic, washed-out flier, its pink backdrop resembling a star-studded branch of some far-away galaxy. A banner of text near the bottom gave an address and a time, with the words “Invite Only.” Whispered asides and flurries of tense laughter bounced around the alleyway,...

The third feature film from Bretten Hannam, writer/director of the 2015 crime thriller North Mountain and the 2021 teen drama Wildhood, is currently filming in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the project is a supernatural thriller called Place of Ghosts. Forrest Goodluck, whose credits include The Revenant, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves has a lead role alongside Blake Alec Miranda (To and From), his Pet Sematary: Bloodlines co-star Glen Gould, and Brandon Oakes (Diggstown).

Place of Ghosts centers on siblings Mise’l and Antle, close confidants as children who have drifted apart as adults. When a malevolent, rotting spirit of teeth and bones begins tormenting them, the siblings are forced to reunite and journey into Skite’kmujuekati’k, or the Place of Ghosts primordial forest that exists outside of time, to face their violent upbringing.

Hannam, who is a Two-Spirit L’nu filmmaker,...

Our latest look at new and recent books about (or connected to) cinema includes looks at a couple beloved classics (Scarface and The Blues Brothers), a unique photography book by Dune dudes Josh Brolin and Greig Fraser, and a deeply involving account of the life of iconic Warhol superstar Candy Darling. Plus, we’ll run through some noteworthy novels that belong on your summer reading list. The world is yours, friends.

The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface by Glenn Kenny (Hanover Square Press)

If you are a film fan who has read Glenn Kenny’s Made Men, the blood-drenched dive into the making of Goodfellas, there is a good chance it is one of your favorite books. Kenny’s follow-up is a look into the creation and legacy of another ultra-violent classic, Brian De Palma’s Scarface. Unsurprisingly, The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface is damn...

John Cameron Mitchell has signed on to produce the upcoming biopic about trans legend Candy Darling!

The 60-year-old Hedwig and the Angry Inch star will serve as an executive producer on the untitled project about the life of the Andy Warhol Superstar directed by Zackary Drucker starring Barbie actress Hari Nef as the trans icon.

Keep reading to find out more…The film follows Candy Darling’s “childhood in Long Island through her years alongside underground icons Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis in Warhol’s Factory scene, and her influence on musicians including Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith. She was immortalized in popular songs including Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and The Velvet Underground’s ‘Candy Says,’” according to Variety.

Candy also starred in Warhol’s cult film Women In Revolt before she died of leukemia in 1974 at age 29.

“Legendary trans icon Candy Darling has...

Zackary Drucker will direct the upcoming biopic about Andy Warhol superstar Candy Darling starring Hari Nef. John Cameron Mitchell also joins the untitled film about the transgender icon as executive producer.

It was previously announced that Nef (“Barbie”) will star in the movie.

The film traces Darling’s childhood in Long Island through her years alongside underground icons Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis in Warhol’s Factory scene, and her influence on musicians including Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith. She was immortalized in popular songs including Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and The Velvet Underground’s “Candy Says.”

Darling also starred in Warhol’s cult film “Women In Revolt” before she died of leukemia in 1974 at age 29.

“I’ve dedicated my life and career to amplifying the history of trans and queer icons, and their impact in shaping art and culture for everyone,” Drucker said in a statement.

Every track on My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a Greek statue frozen in some tragic visage of horror. Anohni’s voice sounds delicate, angry, and exhausted, as she grieves track by track — for the unfulfilled promises of civil rights, for friends lost to drugs and depression, for the immolation of a world succumbing to ecocide. On one song, “Why Am I Alive Now?” her voice quivers and keens as she regards the discord closing in on her (leaves fall off trees, smoke chokes the air,...

Candy Darling is getting the biopic treatment. Darling was one of Andy Warhol's superstars, or personalities he promoted through his art and social circles, and she starred in Warhol's film "Women in Revolt" in 1971. She went on to star in a number of other movies, such as "Silent Night, Bloody Night" and "Some of My Best Friends Are . . ." She was also an icon for the transgender community and a fixture of New York's downtown art and theater scene. The Velvet Underground's song "Candy Says" and the second verse of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" are both tributes to her.

Darling will be portrayed by transgender model and actor Hari Nef. "candy darling is the blueprint: a transsexual glamour girl and indie icon reigning over warhol's manhattan and nixon's america," Nef wrote on Instagram. "she burned fast and bright. more than anything, she wanted to...

Exclusive: Hari Nef (Transparent) is set to portray transgender icon and Andy Warhol superstar Candy Darling in the as-yet-untitled biopic penned by Transparent writer Stephanie Kornick. Deadline exclusively announced the project in 2019.

Nef’s role encompasses Candy’s rise from childhood in Long Island beauty pageantry to her years alongside Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis as a member of the East Village experimental theater group, La Mama Etc., to starring in Warhol’s groundbreaking film, Women In Revolt.

Christian D. Bruun, Louis Spiegler, and Katrina Wolfe are producing alongside executive producer, Zackary Drucker. A director search is currently underway.

Although considered a cult figure by some, Candy has been a cultural touchstone for decades, inspiring the lyrics for songs by Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground, and St. Vincent, as well as a featured character in Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids.

“The dream was always to play Candy,...

“Nightclubbing,” the first-ever documentary about the legendary New York City nightclub Max’s Kansas City, which from 1965 through 1981 was a hotbed for the city’s rock, glam, punk and new wave scenes, has announced a series of screenings across the globe in July and August.

The film — the full title of which is “Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC” — will screen along with another doc from Chip Baker Films, “Sid: The Final Curtain,” which is a brief documentary about the late Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious’ final concert, which took place at Max’s.

“Nightclubbing” is the sixth music documentary from Spanish filmmaker Danny Garcia (others include “The Rise and Fall of The Clash” and “Rolling Stone: The Life and Death of Brian Jones” about the group’s founder and original leader). It premiered at the Dock of the Bay Film Festival in San Sebastián, Spain last month...

Drawings by Jeff CashvanMovie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a flick that we think embodies the era of all-night movie grinding and present the theater at which it premiered.We’ve had the extreme pleasure of screening Paul Morrissey’s outrageously fun horror treats Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, and we are Thrilled to learn of the new release of Dracula by Severin Films, and the upcoming restoration of Frankenstein by Vinegar Syndrome—so, we thought we’d share some thoughts on two of our favorite movies.And… once again, our 'famous' raffle - this month, a little different: four winners will...

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Jason Adams

If you'd like a new addition to your "Damn why wasn't I there?" list of super-cool world events of the past, have I ever got a doozy -- circe 1973, not long after Pink Flamingos had become a cult sensation, a screening of the film was set up by Fran Lebowitz (because obviously) for Andy Warhol and his various hangers-on at Warhol's Factory in New York. John Waters was already a big fan of the soup-can man -- he still owns a "Jackie O" print that pre-dates his homosexuality, gifted by his then-girlfriend in 1964 -- and so this was no doubt a big deal for the famed Baltimorean, and he's recalled the night fondly in interviews:

"... [Andy] had been shot recently, and the last thing he needed was to meet a bunch of new lunatics.... I brought...

Lynn Castle Rose Colored Corner Light (Light In The Attic)

Coming across visually as a prototype Nancy Sinatra about to enter The Valley Of The Dolls, Lynn Castle in the 1960s was an entrancing and beguiling entity. Her debut album finally appears a few years shy of her turning eighty, and it is a tremendous affair, an index of splendid and unrealized possibilities, as stark as it is haunting. 

Vocally she sounds like a female Leonard Cohen who's been listening to too much Nina Simone, whose smoke-laced croak she frequently echoes. Her look though uber-girlie doesn't match her sound, and simply serves to enhance the appeal of her beauty and big, big hair. Think Warhol's Candy Darling doing an arch Barbie doll look and you are nearly there. Add Jackie O shades and you have quite simply arrived. Her sole single 'The Lady Barber' is a wonderful piece of...

Lou Reed was a rock & roll grandmaster whose catalog includes some of the most potent recordings ever made. First with the Velvet Underground, and then as a solo artist, he made music ranging from the wildly experimental to the perfectly straightforward. But Reed was a storyteller above all, waxing poetic about the full, frightening spectrum of human emotions years before others would dare. With their trans heroines, drug narratives, love stories, elegies, guitar jams and drone-scapes, he made LPs that could be flawed. But they always showed a mind two moves ahead.

Holly Woodlawn, a transgender actress in Andy Warhol's Factory and the inspiration behind the opening verse of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," passed away Sunday following a battle with cancer. She was 69. Woodlawn first discovered she had cancer in August and was since transferred to an assisted-living facility in Los Angeles, where she died, the BBC reports.

Born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl in Puerto Rico in 1946, Woodlawn adopted her name from Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's main character Holly Golightly as well as an...

Jane Fonda: From ‘Vietnam Traitor’ to AFI Award and Screen Legend status (photo: Jason Bateman and Jane Fonda in ‘This Is Where I Leave You’) (See previous post: “Jane Fonda Movies: Anti-Establishment Heroine.”) Turner Classic Movies will also be showing the 2014 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Jane Fonda, the former “Vietnam Traitor” and Barbarella-style sex kitten who has become a living American screen legend (and healthy-living guru). Believe it or not, Fonda, who still looks disarmingly great, will be turning 77 years old next December 21; she’s actually older than her father Henry Fonda was while playing Katharine Hepburn’s ailing husband in Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond. (Henry Fonda died at age 77 in August 1982.) Jane Fonda movies in 2014 and 2015 Following a 15-year absence (mostly during the time she was married to media mogul Ted Turner), Jane Fonda resumed her film acting career in 2005, playing Jennifer Lopez...

Jane Fonda movies on TCM: ‘The China Syndrome,’ ‘Klute,’ and Jean-Luc Godard drama ‘Tout Va Bien’ among highlights (photo: Jane Fonda in ‘Klute’) Turner Classic Movies’ 2014 "Summer Under the Stars" kicked off earlier today, August 1, with a day-long series of Jane Fonda movies. Still reviled by American right-wingers because of her 1972 trip to North Vietnam while the United States was at war with that country — she was photographed seated on an anti-aircraft battery — but admired by others for her liberal views, anti-war activism, and human rights advocacy, the two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner has enjoyed a highly eclectic film career, eventually becoming a rarity among rarities: Jane Fonda is the child of a film star (Henry Fonda) who not only became a film star in her own right, but who went on to become an even bigger screen legend than her famous parent. (See also: Jane Fonda “Summer Under...

Very few of Andy Warhol's anointed "superstars" managed a long shelf-life. They simply were too wild, too beautiful, and too damned. There were the poor little rich girl Edie Sedgwick, the transgender icon Candy Darling, and the husky, glacial, heroin-swamped charm of Nico. All gone, along with a cavalcade of others; too soon and in the 20th century. Ultra Violet survived into this one, and originally arrived as a somebody already in the anybody everybody world of The Factory.

Often compared to Vivien Leigh, she was a striking beauty, a privileged French girl from a chateau via a host of reform schools. A muse to the surrealist eccentric Salvador Dali, she was also his muse, assistant, and confidante, although theirs was a decidedly platonic affair begun after she'd entranced him after delivering him a present in New York from a mutual friend. By the time she encountered Warhol, she...

Taylor Mead, the love child of Bette Davis and Peter Lorre, is one of the truly great comic geniuses of underground films, theater, poetry, cabaret, and cable TV of the Sixties and beyond. He was and is still quite hilarious, even if just stumbling down an East Village Street by himself, his traipse being a sort of Danse Macabre as envisioned by Pee Wee Herman.

An Andy Warhol Superstar, possibly best known for his hysterical “gunslinger” in Lonesome Cowboys, Mead’s brilliance never shined brighter than when he took on the title role in Michael McClure’s outrageous off-off-Broadway play, Spider Rabbit, in which he essayed a bunny who adored eating human brains.

But Taylor didn’t need a lead role to be unforgettable. In Rosa von Praunheim’s documentary Tally Brown New York, the constantly morphing star stole his scenes from Ms. Brown, who was no slouch herself when it came to commanding attention.

They have new films and new deals. Their film Beautiful Darling stuns in New York opening, IFC picks up Vampires. Cannes 2011 is proving a break-out time for House of Film (opened in 2009) and founder Ava B., whose vision of a sophisticated and stylish company has been manifested in an impressive lineup and a string of accomplishments: House of Film's Beautiful Darling, about the life and times of Candy Darling (of Andy Warhol fame), opened to enormous success in New York City April 22nd, coming in first in opening weekend per-screen averages, and third in total per-screen averages. It…...

Happy Mother’s Day! Let’s get to it:

This week’s Must Read is j. j. murphy’s review of the Candy Darling documentary Beautiful Darling. Murphy usually writes about indie film screenplays, but I also really like his writings on Warhol, since I’ve been a Warhol nut since college.For Artforum, Amy Taubin reviews James Fotopoulos’ new feature Alice in Wonderland, which just made its World Premiere at Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery. Taubin said it was a must see and now I’m dying to see it, too.Also, Fotopoulos has totally relaunched his company Fantasma Inc. on the web. Check out their new redesigned homepage, then hit ‘em up on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and subscribe to the blog.For Time Out Chicago, Patrick Friel interviews the legendary Ken Jacobs about his lesser-discussed live-performance pieces.Bob Moricz was wowed by a Cinema Project screening of the films of William Eggleston.

Beautiful Darling, the haunting new documentary about the Andy Warhol superstar and pioneering drag-queen transsexual Candy Darling, includes a detail that may not seem to be that big a deal, but that began to astonish me the more I thought about it. It’s that Candy, by the early 1970s, after she’d already become a famous fixture on the downtown scene, was still impoverished, crashing on people’s couches, eating a can of beans for dinner, and — the movie strongly suggests — turning tricks to survive. Basically, she was living the desperate, scraping-through-each-day existence of just about any anonymous New York drag queen.

This interview with "Beautiful Darling" producer Jeremiah Newton was originally published during indieWIRE's coverage of the 2010 New Directors/New Films festival. "Beautiful Darling" hits New York's IFC Center today. Synopsis: Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. ...

This interview with "Beautiful Darling" producer Jeremiah Newton was originally published during indieWIRE's coverage of the 2010 New Directors/New Films festival. "Beautiful Darling" hits New York's IFC Center today. Synopsis: Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. ...

This interview with "Beautiful Darling" producer Jeremiah Newton was originally published during indieWIRE's coverage of the 2010 New Directors/New Films festival. "Beautiful Darling" hits New York's IFC Center today. Synopsis: Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. ...

Today on indieWIRE three reviews hit, Jodie Foster talked "The Beaver" in NYC, five upcoming films got hyped, "The Trip" got a trailer and more. Reviews Eric Kohn caught three films: the Japanese wartime drama "Caterpillar" (which topped this week's Critical Consensus), the documentary "Beautiful Darling," which tracks the life of Candy Darling, the transsexual Andy Warhol muse, and the Canadian exploitation homage, "Hobo with a Shotgun." It's going to ...

Filed under: 'Fone Finds

Today on indieWIRE: Three reviews hit, Jodie Foster talked "The Beaver" in NYC, five upcoming films got hyped, and more.

Eric Kohn caught three films: the Japanese wartime drama 'Caterpillar' (which topped this week's Critical Consensus), the documentary 'Beautiful Darling,' which tracks the life of Candy Darling, the transsexual Andy Warhol muse, and the Canadian exploitation homage 'Hobo With a Shotgun.' It's going to be a good weekend at the cinema -- Kohn liked all three.

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Candy Darling, the transexual bombshell featured in several Andy Warhol movies, two Velvet Underground songs and one Tennessee Williams play, inhabited the precise fantasy she created for herself. That's argument put forth by director James Rasin in "Beautiful Darling," a straightforward biographical survey of the Warhol superstar's unique appeal, which only faded with her premature death from lymphoma at the age of 29. With a mixture of talking heads and ...

"Denis Villeneuve's Incendies — an operatic saga of intergenerational woe — is the cinematic equivalent of a Harlem Globetrotters game, with brazen contrivances and a preordained outcome repurposed as dazzling spectacle." David Ehrlich at Reverse Shot: "A strained melodrama that unspools like the bastard child of Homer and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Incendies devotes the brunt of its 130 minutes to earning the audacity of its resolution — it's a work of such unchecked ambition that it almost has to be excused before it can be appreciated at all. But if Villeneuve's film ultimately resolves itself as little more than a gaudy parlor trick, it's an expertly executed bit of chicanery whose punchline hits you square in the gut."

"It's a dual story," explains New York's David Edelstein, "of French-Canadian brother-and-sister twins compelled by the will of their dead mother to locate a father they thought died decades earlier and a brother they never knew existed; and,...

"Ralf Huettner's sleeper hit Vincent Wants to Sea was the surprise best picture winner at the 61st German Film Awards, Germany's version of the Oscars." Scott Roxborough from Berlin for the Hollywood Reporter: "Florian David Fitz, who's better known as a TV performer here, won best actor for his starring performance in Vincent as a Tourette's sufferer who, once in his life, wants to see the ocean."

The Lolas, as these awards are called, have three categories for Best Film: Gold, which has gone to Vincent; Silver, which goes this year to Yasemin Samdereli's immigration comedy Almanya, also picking up the screenplay award (which Samdereli shares with her sister, Nesrin); and Bronze, presented to If Not Us, Who?, Andres Veiel's retelling of the love story between Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper and their breakup when Ensslin enters into her fateful relationship with Andreas Baader.

Tom Tykwer wins Best Director for Three,...

A lot of hay has been made lately about the future of Netflix streaming movies over the Internet for its subscribers as opposed to their original business model of being a mail-order DVD rental service. A good recent article on the subject was written by Chuck Tryon, who waded through all the hype and arguments against to try to figure out what impact Internet streaming of movies has on the movie industry.

Well, forget about the industry for the moment. How is Netflix streaming affecting the underground filmmaker?

Personally, I’m not a Netflix subscriber, so wading through their offerings is a bit more difficult for me. However, I was still curious if the company was streaming any underground movies. To find out if they were, I ended up searching a website called Instant Watcher, which is a company independent of Netflix, but uses a Netflix developer Api to scan...

When Stephen Dorff exits a black Ferrari in the middle of nowhere at the beginning of "Somewhere," one thing is clear as the dust settles from the dirt donuts he's made in the distance - he was meant to be a movie star. So it is with slight irony that the film in which Dorff plays one in the middle of an existential crisis is the role that may lead to his professional rediscovery in real life. Once a darling of indie cinema during the '90s to the point where he played Candy Darling in "I Shot Andy Warhol," Dorff has since endured life on a Uwe Boll set and seen his devilish grin that made him poised to become a leading man co-opted by filmmakers to pigeonhole him as a bad guy in films such as "Blade."

As Johnny Marco, the only demons Dorff battles in "Somewhere" are...

Sofia Coppola's familiar tale of a lost and lonely Hollywood actor is brought to life by two superb central performances

Writing to his agent in 1936, F Scott Fitzgerald claimed that back in 1920 he'd attempted to persuade Dw Griffith, then the world's most famous movie director, that "people were so interested in Hollywood that there was money to be made in a picture about that and romance in the studio". Griffith, however, "was immediately contemptuous of it", and despite the success four years later of the comedy Merton of the Movies, Hollywood was reluctant to look seriously at itself. Well, things certainly began to change shortly thereafter. In 1937 there was A Star is Born, one of the most downbeat movies about success in Tinseltown, and then came several major novels, including Fitzgerald's unfinished and posthumously published The Last Tycoon and two highly critical works of fiction by friends of his:...

Wham, bam, thank you Glam! Coming off successful screenings of his new film "127 Hours," about injured rock climber Aaron Ralston, and with his performance as poet Allen Ginsberg in "Howl" earning strong reviews, James Franco showed his rebellious side by collaborating with fashion photographer Terry Richardson and appearing on the cover of “Candy” magazine in full Candy Darling-style with slicked back hair and heavy make-up. According to “The New York Post,” Franco’s appearance on the first magazine dedicated to “Transversal Style, trans-sexuality, cross-dressing and androgeny” continued Franco’s career policy of giving his fans the unexpected.

The 46th Chicago International Film Festival is coming, and The Scorecard Review will be there will exclusive interviews, movie reviews and red carpet events beginning October 7, 2010.

Here is the news release on the documentaries at this year’s festival.

Chicago, September 7, 2010 – As documentary films gain ever-increasing recognition in theaters around the world, the 46th Chicago International Film Festival announces the 2010 lineup of its Docufest documentary program and new series for true movie buffs, “Film on Film.” Sponsored by DePaul University, Docufest and the Film on Film program feature four world premieres, one international premiere, two North American premieres and two USA premieres.

Special guests attending this year range from award-winning filmmakers Alex Gibney and Lucy Walker to debuting directors making bold first impressions and even troupes of circus performers, slam poets, and a “minuteman” border guard. Twelve countries are represented across these 17 films. The Docufest competition jury includes the winner...

Self-serving link first again: My latest index-y type project on Bad Lit is the DVD Underground, a list of DVDs and DVD box sets of classic underground films. This is part of my timeline project. So, please check it out. But, more importantly, check these out: Here’s a fantastic interview you have to read: Miss Rosen chats with filmmaker, photographer, exhibitor and general all around underground troublemaker Anton Perich. Plus, the piece is illustraed with Perich’s wonderful B&W pictures of Candy Darling, Robert Mapplethorpe and Andrea Feldman, a.k.a. Andrea Whips. Can you identify the filmmaker in the photo at this groovy ’60s San Francisco Country Joe and the Fish performance? Seriously, the blogger over there wants to know. Making Light of It has some very cool stills from Philippe Grandrieux’s La Vie Nouvelle, that appears to be some sort of homage to Wavelength or something.

Candy Darling & Joan Rivers Ignite P-Town By Stephen Holt Having just returned from the sunny Cape Cod shores of the Provincetown International Film Festival, I can safely say that two...

 

A new documentary, Beautiful Darling, chronicles the life and challenges encountered by Candy Darling, who became a fixture on the 1960s social scene thanks to her status as a high profile transsexual who was one of Andy Warhol's entourage. Born James L. Slattery, Candy Darling died from cancer at age 30 in 1974. The new film sheds light on the controversies and personal anguish she endured, even as she basked in the media spotlight. Click here for more...

George Haimsohn A devoted scholar of femininity, Candy's life was a tribute to that sorceress womanhood that had cast a spell on her--the very same one she would later wield against others. Candy Darling had a way of eclipsing everything else around her, on stage, screen, and in the theater of life. Maybe it was that hair--golden blonde and billowy, and, like the woman beneath it, almost incandescent; or maybe it was her eyes, some inner spark shone outward, at once brassy and delicate, feral and fragile. Able to embody a stunning spectrum of selves, Candy was an encyclopedia of female archetypes. As a result, her every word and gesture were a tribute to the ladies in whose image she had built herself. There was in Candy the femme fatale, the southern belle, the damsel in distress, the man-in-a-dress, the soubrette,...

"Given his four-decade-plus career as a New York City chronicler of both everyday and high fashion, Bill Cunningham is astutely defined by Bill Cunningham New York as not simply a traditional photographer of clothing, but an anthropological historian," writes Nick Schager. Richard Press's documentary, then, is a nearly perfect opening film for this year's New Directors / New Film series, running from tomorrow through April 4 — and indieWIRE asks Press about his first feature.

Andrew Schenker introduces Slant's indispensable guide to Nd/Nf 2010: "Once again scouring Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Sundance for the choicest work being done by cinematic rookies and near rookies (Judy Berlin director Eric Mendelsohn returns to the lineup after an 11-year absence), the programmers of the 39th edition of the Lincoln Center/Museum of Modern Art showcase offer festgoers their choice among daring provocations (I Killed My Mother, Xavier Dolan's anguished festival closing howl), affectionate docu-portraits (Beautiful Darling,...

Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. A party fixture, she appeared in Warhol films, and Tennessee Williams cast her in a play. She was seen and written about, and then, before she turned 30, cancer claimed her ...

Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. A party fixture, she appeared in Warhol films, and Tennessee Williams cast her in a play. She was seen and written about, and then, before she turned 30, cancer claimed her ...

Born James Slattery in Massapequa, Long Island, in 1944, Candy Darling transformed herself into a stunning blonde actress who in the mid-Sixties became an active player in New York’s “downtown” scene. In her passionate act of self-creation, Candy Darling mesmerized. A party fixture, she appeared in Warhol films, and Tennessee Williams cast her in a play. She was seen and written about, and then, before she turned 30, cancer claimed her ...

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London

A reminder that "human rights" is a universal issue rather than an empty poltical buzz word, with 28 searing films from around the world. Like Anthony Lapaglia's star turn in The Balibo Conspiracy, a gripping fictionalisation of the disappearance of five Australian TV journalists during the East Timor invasion of 1975, the truth of which lay undiscovered for over 30 years. Or the timely Moloch Tropical, a film from Haitian minister of culture-turned-auteur, Raoul Peck imagining the mental unravelling of the country's prime minister. Other highlights include Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's intimate Women Without Men, and Red Chapel, which finds comedy in North Korea.

Various venues, Wed to 26 Mar, visit hrw.org/iff

Andrea Hubert

London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

There's little to galvanise this year's crop (over 75 films and documentaries), besides tragedy, love, religion, schooldays and nestling together under a big rainbow-coloured umbrella.

Beautiful Darling, James Rasin's documentary on the life of actress and Warhol superstar Candy Darling, premieres at the Berlin Film Festival this week. In it, actress Chloe Sevigny voices Darling. From the film's website: Beautiful Darling, a documentary film, pays tribute to the short but influential life of an extraordinary person -- the actress Candy Darling, born James Slattery in a Long Island suburb in 1944. Drawn to the feminine from childhood, by the mid-Sixties James had become Candy, a gorgeous, blonde actress and well-known downtown New York figure. Candy's career took her through the raucous and revolutionary Off-off-Broadway theater scene and into Andy Warhol's legendary Factory. There she became close to Warhol and starred...

  Berlin -- Brit director Mat Whitecross, who shook up the Berlin film festival with his last two documentaries, "The Shock Doctrine" (2009) and "Road to Guantanamo" (2006) is returning this year with "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll," a biopic of British punk icon Ian Dury starring Andy Serkis.

"Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" is certain to be one of the highlights of this year's Panorama lineup, which was announced Friday.

Other returning veterans include French filmmakers Jacques Martineau and Olivier Ducastel, whose new drama "Family Tree" will have its world premiere in Berlin; Hong Kong helmer Skud, coming to town with "Amphetamine" and Austrian director Peter Kern, whose "Initiation" looks at the relationship between an octogenarian and a 16-year-old boy.

Art and gay cinema have always had pride of place at the Panorama, and are well represented in the 2010 lineup. Panorama's non-fiction section, the Dokumente, includes "Waste Land," Lucy Walker's portrait of artist...

As we recently reported, Horror director Rania Ajami (Katalog, And The Earth Fell Silent Again) is world-premiering her latest horror/fantasy/comedy movie, Asylum Seekers, at the 2009 CineVegas Film festival. She's being joined by several other women and their genre films, like The Ghost and Us by Emily Carmichael and the documentary about underground filmmakers The Kuchar brothers It Came From Kuchar directed by Jennifer Kroot. Included in the lineup is the work-in-progress documentary Beautiful Darling about Andy Warhol superstar Candy Darling... read more...

Carnival of Souls

Directed by Herk Harvey (Criterion DVD)

A small 1962 gem in crisp, clear monochrome Carnival of Souls is a noir masterpiece, a symphony in flickering greys. Deserving a finer reputation than the B Movie tag normally suggests, it is creepy and campy without ever plumbing the depths the genre implies. This low-budget exercise in masterful editing is completely stolen by the glacial remoteness of the central character, played with wide-eyed distraction by the Lee Strasberg-trained Candace Hilligoss. If ever Hitchcock missed out on a blonde, it is she. A cross between Janet Leigh and Candy Darling, she moves through the movie with supreme elegance.

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