And so she also arrived with all these ghosts ,” Duverdier observes, adding that spectral images make for a visual motif in the film. “Like Patti Smith said at the beginning of the film, she went there because she wanted to follow the trace of the giants. The film is also available for viewing on a variety of platforms including Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Spectrum, Dish, DirecTV and others.Ī question hovers around the Chelsea Hotel–whether ghosts haunt the corridors and lurk in the alcoves. Martin Scorsese executive produced Dreaming Walls, which is being distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures. In a way it can become a kind of zoo where you go and see, ‘Oh, what does it look like?’” “There’s a paradox even for the owners,” Duverdier says. The ownership wants to leverage the exotic history of the place without having it encroach too much on visitors shelling out for luxury accommodations. The hotel’s current owners have built a private elevator for long-time residents, but instead of that being a convenience, some residents feel it’s meant to keep them out of sight of paying guests. I think if you don’t have this person who is the center, who is the colonne vertébrale (vertebral column), it’s hard to create something like that.” Magnolia Pictures/Clindoeil Films He chose the people who were able to live there, who would get on well together, who would become good artists,” the French-born Duverdier says. He became known as a “Robin Hood of innkeepers,” who nurtured the Bohemian culture, “running the hotel with a studied obliviousness” (as the New York Times put it) for over 40 years. The Chelsea’s reputation as a haven for artists was well established by 1964 when Stanley Bard, a part owner, began managing the place.
And a lot of them, for example, they don’t have children. “But it has been their life all the time and they choose it since the beginning.
“They are getting older, so of course it becomes hard sometimes to really create,” Duverdier says of the graying artists. Aged now, Lister stills moves balletically at times, lifting herself out of a wheelchair. In 1983, for the 100 th anniversary of the building, Lister created the “Dance of the Spirits,” in which a woman in a white gown writhed along the Chelsea’s ornate staircase, draping herself dangerously over the railing. He’s a youngster compared to dancer-choreographer Merle Lister, another character in the film. Another resident interviewed in Dreaming Walls notes, “I’ve had six or eight lives here.” Choreographer Merle Lister dances with a construction worker Magnolia Pictures/Clindoeil FilmsĬhelsea denizen Skye Ferrante sculpts remarkable portraits out of wire. Grossman lived in the Chelsea for 50 years. It looked like a wreck, but you blow off the dust and there’s nothing but beautiful sculptural treasures.” “She was eccentric with a capital E,” noted Robert Lambert, a painter and fellow tenant, in an interview with the New York Times that marked Grossman’s passing last year at age 94. These people are also part of this atmosphere.”Īmong the first Chelsea residents they got to know was Bettina Grossman, an artist who tenanted room 503, a space so stuffed with artwork that Grossman often slept in her hallway on a lawn chair. “That’s the fertile soil to let the other ones emerge,” Duverdier insists. Artist Bettina Grossman in ‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ Magnolia Pictures/Clindoeil Films But the filmmakers believe the lesser known residents may be just as responsible for creating the Chelsea aura. The Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious may or may not have stabbed his girlfriend to death there in 1978. Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, composer Virgil Thomson, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Wolfe, Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke, Stanley Kubrick and fellow filmmaker Miloš Foreman, and the artist Christo, have all been associated with the Hotel Chelsea in one way or another. The bigger names range from Mark Twain in the 19 th century to Oscar Wilde in the early 20 th. “We wanted to talk about these lives that have been in the shadow, in a way, of the bigger names.” “It’s a film of encounters and the people we met, we love them,” explains Maya Duverdier, who co-directed the film with Amélie van Elmbt. CNN Sets Premiere Date For 'Little Richard: I Am Everything' - Updateĭirectors Maya Duverdier (L) and Amélie van Elmbt Magnolia Pictures
0 kommentar(er)
