Rene Ricard

Photographed entirely in color, Four Stars was projected in its complete length of nearly 25 hours (allowing for projection overlap of the 35-minute reels) only once, at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque in New York City. The imagery in the film is dense, wearying and beautiful, but ultimately hard to decipher, for, in contrast to his earlier, and more famous film Chelsea Girls, made in 1966, Warhol insisted that two reels be screened simultaneously on top of each other on a single screen, rather than side-by-side. The film's title is a pun on the rating system used by critics to rank films, with "four stars" being the highest rating. From Wikipedia.

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The story of Joan of Arc as applied to the present revolution in arts and more. The Gothic is applied to the War in Vietnam. The film is experimental in the sense that in it the visual becomes tactile.

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This film is an outgrowth of one of Sonbert's film classes at NYU, in which he was given outtakes from a Hollywood film photographed by Hal Mohr to re-edit into a narrative sequence. Adding to this found footage, Sonbert filmed Warhol's superstars Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga in more private and reflective moments. -- Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

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Follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City.

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The story of two men (Ed Hood, Patrick Fleming ) in bed whose assignation gets interrupted by friends and neighbours. Hood tries to maintain control of Fleming, as well as the situation, while everyone talks, drinks, smokes, and wrestles on his bed. Double-screen projection runs at 66 minutes.

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Rene Ricard in a lost Screen Test. The image was reproduced on the cover of the book ‘Screen Tests/A Diary’ (New York: Kulchar Press, 1967).

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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.

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Andy Warhol (Rene Ricard) invites a friend (Edie Sedgwick) over to his apartment one evening to discuss his career. As they talk, the truth about how Warhol uses and then throws people away comes out. The woman begins to come undone and reveals to Warhol how he ruined her life with drugs and false promises of fame.

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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.

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