Matter of Factory

by Shaun Brady

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Andy Warhol's Factory crowd was a cult of "cult of personality" — a cadre of professional self-aggrandizers who can still sniff out a spotlight with bloodhoundlike precision four decades after their heyday.

The risk of making any film relating to the Factory is in being overwhelmed by the personalities of your subjects. Filmmaker Esther Robinson faces the added obstacle that her subject — her uncle, Danny Williams, who documented the Factory on film, designed the light show for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable and who may or may not have been Warhol's lover — mysteriously disappeared in 1966.

While Robinson does inevitably get sucked into relating more of the Factory's history than her uncle's, she does a better job than most at keeping the project focused. In a way, she reveals more about the group's inner workings via their answers regarding Danny Williams; there's endless debate about his importance to Warhol and the Factory, and the conflicting stories spotlight the legacy of infighting and petty grievances.

All of these personalities — including Gerard Malanga, Paul Morrissey, Billy Name, Brigid Berlin and John Cale — possess outsized egos that were already crowded together, the disappearance of one from their midst merely allowed them to expand and fill the gap. Some profess to barely remember Williams, while others work aggressively to downplay his involvement.

Robinson balances these interviews with reminiscences from Williams' mother and siblings, who view the Factory folks as the proverbial bad crowd that led their Danny astray. Still, very little emerges to actually illuminate Williams in any way, and he remains an absence at the center of a fascinating story.

The coup for Robinson was the discovery, by Warhol archivist Callie Angell, of a batch of 16 mm black-and-white films shot by Williams using Warhol's Bolex — most portraits of Warhol himself, some featuring the Velvet Underground looking barely old enough to play their own instruments. Friday's screening will be followed by a 70-minute program of Williams' films.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory, Fri., Feb. 15, 7 p.m., $8-$10, with Danny Williams' Factory Films; and Sat., Feb. 16, 5 p.m., $5-$7, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, ihousephilly.org.