Roman Variations

Keeping Busy

Warhol Superstars Viva and Louis Waldon are the main subjects of Auder’s first film with synched sound, Keeping Busy (1969), which was billed as “a film novel about what they did to keep busy.”

Voyage to the Center of the Phone Lines

Voyage's structure is simple. Coastal landscape footage and spectacular sunsets are combined with phone conversations recorded from a scanner that picks up cordless phone frequencies.

The Feature

The Feature does not reconcile fact and fiction; instead, it blurs the definitions seemingly represented by the film’s two clearly demarcated registers: that of the archival footage and that of the new, theatrical material. In his guise as “Michel Auder,” living a fulsome and extravagant life, replete with beautiful women and a rock-cut pool overlooking Los Angeles, the art world is revealed as a sham, and his character exhibits a repulsive narcissism. And yet, when caught in quiet moments, something poignant emerges—a glimmer of truth that rebels against the entire endeavour. Or maybe, that’s what makes The Feature.

Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol

In 1969 Michel Auder began a series of video diaries that chronicled the art scene in downtown New York. In Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol, Auder captures revealing moments in Warhol's public and private life: the opening of the 1970 Whitney Museum retrospective, a party held at John Lennon and Yoko Ono's home, a heated telephone conversation between Warhol, Viva and Brigid Berlin, and an illuminating interview conducted with Larry Rivers, the grandfather of Pop Art, following the publication of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol in 1975. The issue of money is a consistent topic of conversation with Viva, who after departing the Factory in 1969 sent Warhol a series of threatening letters demanding money.

Fun and Games for Everyone

“FUN AND GAMES (FOR EVERYONE): a pitch black and milky white film shot during one of Olivier Mosset's exhibition openings. A psychedelic game of improvisation joins the Zanzibar group with Salvador Dalí, Barbet Schroeder and Jean Mascolo... the solarized image reminiscent of thick strokes of a paintbrush.” - Philippe Azoury

Cleopatra

Cleopatra situates itself in the same relationship to Hollywood as the Warhol/Morrisey films of the period. It corresponds to Joseph Mankiewicz's 1963 Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton which Auder's cast watched and used as the starting point for scene by scene improvisation Auder drew his cast from Warhol's ensemble – including not only Viva and Louis Waldon, but also Taylor Mead, Ondine, Andrea Feldman, Gerard Melanga and others.

The Stone Age

"The question is, it is either going to be a stoned age or a new Stone Age" - Louis Brigante

1967

1967 (made in 2015) presents newly found and digitized silent 16mm films from the 1960s in the form of a four-part composition portraying a cast of artists, writers, musicians and actors who made up the bohemian underground of that time. The film recasts the essence of a scene whose participants have since been idealized as celebrities or else forgotten.

Home Movie : Marrakech

The film begins with shots in Venice, passers-by seized from a hotel room, with Tina Aumont. It continues in Morocco during the filming of Bed of the Virgin, in a hotel room, people chat, play the guitar, smoke.

Alice Neel Paints Margaret

Auder observes his friend Alice Neel as she paints and talks her way through her portrait of Margaret Evans Pregnant

Magnetic Notes, 1986-1987

Auder's reminiscences from 1986 - 87.

Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking

Jesus

Michel Auder’s Jesus – in which underground NY artists and Warhol superstars openly discuss their beliefs. Jesus – which premiered as a screening at The Kitchen in 1980 – mixes documentary elements such as footage of evangelical TV programs, books, cartoons, paintings, and other Jesus related imagery – with performances including Taylor Mead as a priest in the West Village and Florence Lambert playing a crucified Jesus. Also, intercut throughout are surprisingly candid interviews with Auder’s friends, family, and people he approaches on New York City streets about their faith and relationship to the world’s most famous person. Among those interviewed are Diego Cortez, Jackie Curtis, Gerard Malanga, Alice Neel (Andrew Neel’s grandmother), Larry Rivers, and Viva.

Talking Head

In Michel Auder's short video Talking Head, a young girl (presumably his daughter) is occupied with a plastic toy-package of some sort. She talks incessantly about 'a nothing-nothing'; 'a thing that never came back again…. everyone was mad about it and sad about it…but nothing ever happened'. Michel Auder, hiding behind a Yucca (or some such exotic plant), films the girl telling this story. She develops her 'story' circumventing and encompassing this nothing-thing, and she does it in a hypnotizing and repetitive way, like a mantra, using all the permutations possible with a minimum amount of words or facts.


Narcolepsy

Narcolepsy includes footage shot with a small hand-held digital video camera, mobile phones and underwater devices. The videos appear on one monitor at a time, as the rest remain blank. A transparent rabbit in bed is superimposed on a dog in the snow; hands being washed under a faucet are juxtaposed with an outdoor flood; little girls play with dolls and mothers tend real babies; a spider web holds a captive fly.

Polaroid Cocaine

The thrill of cocaine becomes a metaphor for the consumption of images in this short montage. The title and lyrics come from Auder´s friend and 2001 Prix Goncourt winner Jean-Jacques Shuhl. The piece is composed entirely of still photographs from a variety of books and magazines that simultaneously reveal and feed an addiction to spectacle. With a source that is once removed, Auder's scopophilia is symptomatic of society at large. The song is performed by legendary chanteuse Ingrid Caven. Suffused with a bittersweet melancholy, Canven's seasoned voice compliments Auder's selection of images which dwell on the themes of death, destruction and desire. The melody is classic cabaret performed by a piano/violin duo who dramatically heighten the works already dark eroticism.