Now playing at NYC’s IFC Center through next Thursday, May 5: BEAUTIFUL DARLING
James Rasin’s documentary on the Warhol Superstar premiered at last year’s Berlinale before going on to screen at New Directors/New Films and a number of other festivals. The film opened theatrically at the IFC Center last week, where it has been held over, and has a number of additional engagements coming up in May, June, and July, from Los Angeles and Washington DC to San Francisco and Atlanta, among others.
The rare subcultural star to crossover into the mainstream consciousness, trans Warhol Superstar Candy Darling was an inspiration to Lou Reed, Tennessee Williams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, and Cecil Beaton, appearing in films, plays, and photographs in the late 1960s and early 1970s before leukemia cut her life short in 1974. In the moving BEAUTIFUL DARLING, director Rasin and producer and longtime friend Jeremiah Newton have assembled a treasure trove of archival material and interviews to tell the fascinating story of Darling’s life on the wild side while simultaneously capturing both her humanity and a palpable sense of the long-gone NYC milieu in which she lived.
Candy Darling was in Trash and maybe other Warhol films in the early 1970s. S/he must have died very shortly after.–B2