"The films that Andy Warhol made in the 1960s are now recognized as among the most important works of his career. One of the most ambitious projects of Warhol's cinema is the Screen Tests, a series of 472 short, black-and-white portraits of Warhol's friends, colleagues, and acquaintances filmed over a period of three years, from 1964 through 1966." "Taken as a whole, the Screen Tests are a conceptual portrait of a New York era - the complex, interconnected avant-garde art world of the mid-1960s. They also offer a reflected portrait of Warhol himself - his friendships and connections, his egalitarianism and his ambition, his fascination with personality and the human face, his eye for talent and for beauty, his mastery of the photographic, cinematic image."--BOOK JACKET.

A celebrated writer on contemporary art and queer culture argues that Andy Warhol's films enable us to see differently, and to see a different world. “We didn't think of our movies as underground or commercial or art or porn; they were a little of all of those, but ultimately they were just 'our kind of movie.'” —Andy Warhol Andy Warhol was a remarkably prolific filmmaker, creating more than 100 movies and nearly 500 of the film portraits known as Screen Tests. And yet relatively little has been written about this body of work. Warhol withdrew his films from circulation in the early 1970s and it was only after his death in 1987 that they began to be restored and shown again. With Our Kind of Movie Douglas Crimp offers the first single-authored book about the full range of Andy Warhol's films in forty years—and the first since the films were put back into circulation. In six essays, Crimp examines individual films, including Blow Job, Screen Test No. 2, and Warhol's cinematic masterpiece The Chelsea Girls (perhaps the most commercially successful avant-garde film of all time), as well as groups of films related thematically or otherwise—films of seductions in confined places, films with scenarios by Ridiculous Theater playwright Ronald Tavel. Crimp argues that Warhol's films make visible new, queer forms of sociality. Crimp does not view these films as cinéma-vérité documents of Warhol's milieu, or as camera-abetted voyeurism, but rather as exemplifying Warhol's inventive cinema techniques, his collaborative working methods, and his superstars' unique capabilities. Thus, if Warhol makes visible new social relations, Crimp writes, that visibility is inextricable from his making a new kind of cinema. In Our Kind of Movie Crimp shows how Warhol's films allow us to see against the grain—to see differently and to see a different world, a world of difference.

Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls had its premiere at the Film-Maker's Cinémathèque on 15 September 1966. It sold out a 200-seat theatre and went on to become the first film to move from the underground to commercial cinema. Since 1972, when Warhol pulled all of his films out of distribution, the public has had extremely limited access to The Chelsea Girls , outside of museum screenings. In honour of the 20th Anniversary of The Andy Warhol Museum and what would have been Warhol's 85th birthday, hundreds of Warhol's films - some never seen before - have been converted to a digital format with the partnership of The Andy Warhol Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Moving Picture Company (MPC), a Technicolor Company. This book is an in-depth look at Warhol's most famous film. It includes all newly digitized film stills, never-before-published transcripts, unpublished archival materials, and expanded information about each of the individual films that comprise the three- plus hour film. As the film alternates sound between the left and right screens, the book reproduces the transcript in complete form as one hears it, with imagery from the corresponding reels. There is also a full transcription of the unheard reels in the back of the book. This is a substantial contribution to the scholarship on Warhol's complex and most commercial film.

"One acclaimed filmmaker takes the measure of another! Murphy's candid and richly personal account of Andy Warhol's filmmaking is a brilliant contribution to our understanding of one of cinema's most original and prolific masters, exploring the artist's multiple forms of psychodrama with a filmmaker's insight and attention to detail. As more and more of the restored Warhol films become available, this book will remain an indispensable handbook for film historians and general moviegoers alike--especially because it is such a genuine pleasure to read."--David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles. "Those of us who care about independent cinema have always struggled with Andy Warhol's massive oeuvre. At long last J.J. Murphy, who has spent a lifetime making contributions to independent cinema, has undertaken the Herculean task of helping us understand Warhol's development as a filmmaker. Murphy's precision, stamina, and passion are evident in this examination of an immense body of work--as is his ability to report what he has discovered in a readable and informative manner. The Black Hole of the Camera helps us to re-conceptualize Warhol's films not simply as mythic pranks, but as the diverse creations of a prolific and inventive film artist."--Scott MacDonald, author of A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (5 vols.). "In his careful firsthand study of Andy Warhol's films, J. J. Murphy contributes to the ongoing revision of the enduring but misplaced perceptions of Warhol as a passive, remote, and one-dimensional artist. Murphy's discussions of authorship, the relation of content to form, the role of "dramatic conflict," and the complexity of Warhol's camera work show these perceptions to be stubborn myths. The Black Hole of the Camera offers a clear sense of the nuances of Warhol's fascinating, prolific, and influential activities in filmmaking."--Reva Wolf, author of Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s.

When James Warhola was a little boy, his father had a junk business that turned their yard into a wonderful play zone that his mother didn't fully appreciate! But whenever James and his family drove to New York City to visit Uncle Andy, they got to see how "junk" could become something truly amazing in an artist's hands.