![]() ![]() The audience really, really loved it,” Kurnitz says. The documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last July, with Haynes and Kurnitz among those in attendance. The world premiere of The Velvet Underground at Cannes Mega The Velvet Underground, from Apple Original Films, is nominated for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature at the Cinema Eye Honors and as Best Music Documentary at next month’s IDA Awards in Hollywood. Gonçalves and Kurnitz earned editing nominations for the film from the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards and the upcoming Cinema Eye Honors Awards. And instead of being constraining, it was actually freeing for us.” “The interesting thing,” Gonçalves adds, “is we had those mandates, like the culture of the time has to be incorporated, and it has to be within the visual of diptychs, triptychs and whatever shapes we found. “He talked about how important the culture of the time was,” Kurnitz recalls, “that we weren’t just attacking this music doc, that it was a doc about culture of the time, filmmaking of the time and we needed to work to fit The Velvet Underground into the scene that it sort of bubbled out of.” Editor Affonso Gonçalves Apple Original Films In conversations with his editors, Haynes laid out the intellectual strategy for the film. “He’s staring at you… You listen to what’s being said, and you look at the archival footage and you check with Lou, or you’re just staring at Lou the whole time or Cale or Moe, whoever’s in the screen… It becomes very, very intimate in a way.” “It becomes almost interactive because he’s looking at us, he’s looking at the audience,” Gonçalves says of Reed. Reed, in particular, makes for an arresting presence, staring into the camera in those Warhol tests, barely blinking, the split screen next to him occupied with footage from that era. ![]() “It’s such a rare thing to be able to tell the story of a person and then just watch the person the whole time as you’re being told the story of their life or their childhood.” “I can’t tell you enough what a complete gift it was to have those ,” Kurnitz notes. For the editors, that was a Velvet goldmine. Warhol’s original black and white screen tests appear in the documentary, often in split screen with archival footage. And then I would light it with a gel, like Andy did with the color on their faces that were exactly natural.” And then the printed silk screens that he did of the movie stars, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Debbie Harry, Jacqueline Onassis… That’s in the background of all the interviews-we would pick a color for each person. “Andy’s screen tests where he would just set up the Bolex and have somebody look in the camera with one light source-that became a touchstone for us. “A combination between Warhol silkscreens and his screen tests informed how I would shoot the interviews,” Lachman explains. They cross-pollinated with experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas and pop artist Andy Warhol and his Factory scene.Ĭale, Tucker and Factory star Mary Woronov are among the people Haynes interviewed for the film. The Velvet Underground inserts the viewer into the visual and sonic milieu from which the band sprang: low-rent Manhattan warrens of the mid-‘60s, where Reed combined energies with musicians John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, and-for a time-German vocalist and model Nico. So, for me, all films are documentation.” Where they hit the light, how the camera moves, you’re documenting something in time and space. “You’re working with an actor, but no performance is ever the same. “I have to say, for me, there’s no difference… I always say, in a weird way, all films are documentations, even in a narrative form,” Lachman tells Deadline. He says he doesn’t alter his approach to photography based on whether a film is fiction or otherwise. Over the course of his long career, Lachman has shot documentaries and scripted films, and earned Oscar nominations for two of Haynes’ dramatic features, Carol (2015), and Far From Heaven (2002). ![]() The Velvet Underground's Influence On Director Todd Haynes’ Film Went Far Beyond The Band’s Music - Contenders Documentary Cinematographer Ed Lachman Apple Original Films ![]()
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