A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams & the Factory with Factory Films featuring live accompaniment by T. Griffin and Catherine McRae

Friday, Feb 15, 2008 7:00 PM EST
at International House
in Philadelphia, PA

One evening in 1966, while visiting family in New England, Danny Williams got into his car and was never heard from again. A year before, the promising young artist was living out his dreams. Dropping out of Harvard to take up filmmaking, he found himself in the middle of Andy Warhol?s close circle at the Factory. Williams? love affair with Warhol was brief and his mark on the Factory scene was fleeting. Forty years after his disappearance, Williams? own niece (whom he?d never even met) uncovered a box of 16mm films he had made at the Factory. Featuring interviews with his family as well as Factory members Brigid Berlin, Paul Morrissey, Gerard Melanga and Billy Name, A Walk Into the Sea is a demythologizing look behind the scenes of one of the most important eras in contemporary art. followed by Danny Williams? Factory Films This 70 minute program includes Williams? Factory Film featuring amazingly intimate scenes of Andy Warhol along with other Factory stars and the world premiere of The Velvet Underground and The Velvet Underground Eat Lunch, with the impossibly young-looking band rehearsing, clowning around, and, yes, eating lunch at the Factory. These films are screened silent. For the luminous Harold Stevenson parts 1 and 2, T. Griffin and Catherine McRae created a score for guitar, violin, samples and Walkman. Taking cues from modern ambient artists like Tim Hecker and Belong, Griffin and McRae bury melodies deep under shimmering drones that shift gradually over the film?s 40 minutes, evoking both the joyful optimism and the sense of lost history and promise that were hidden in the films for almost 40 years. T. Griffin and Catherine McRae, also known as The Quavers, collaborated on live soundtrack experiments with noted filmmaker Jem Cohen, theater directors Anne Bogart and Richard Maxwell and musicians including Vic Chesnutt, Tom Verlaine, members of godspeed you! black emperor, The Ex, Fugazi and Patti Smith.