Directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie Van Elmbt chose to bring their unique perspective on the intersection between art and commerce to Dreaming Walls, an inventive new documentary about the transition that New York City’s famed Chelsea Hotel is currently going through. The film immerses the viewer in the lives of the inhabitants of the hotel as it goes through renovations. The owners of the establishment are prepared to rent out refurbished rooms out to wealthy, upper class individuals but starving artists continue to reside in the formerly glamorous artist’s colony.
We had the opportunity to talk to Van Elmbt and Duverdier about the challenges that they faced in editing the documentary and the influence that Grey Gardens had on their approach to dealing with interview subjects.
So what was it that drew you towards this material?
Amelie Van Elmbt: We didn’t initially want to make a film about the Chelsea Hotel. It happened by chance because we were in New York City when one of my films was being screened. We encountered the building whilst the Tribeca Film Festival was taking place. Of course we recognized it and knew about its storied history but we didn’t enter the hotel knowing that we wanted to make a film about it.
Maya Duverdier: We invited one of the artists who appears in the film to a screening of Amelie’s film and they helped us to understand the situation that residents of the hotel are in. We didn’t actually know that it was closed to the public. We had such special encounters with several of the occupants of the Chelsea and we felt that we were documenting the hotel during a fascinating period in its history. We started to think of making a film about the hotel after those first encounters but we didn’t have any real sense of purpose at the beginning. We began to spend more time with the tenants as we dug deeper into the history of the place and we discovered that there were so many stories to be held about the people who live there. At first, the idea for the film seemed quite obtuse. We knew what we wanted to say and how we wanted to say it but that central concept became increasingly clear in our minds as filming progressed.
You do take a very unique approach to telling this specific story and it is very noticeable that you never look at the hotel’s glamorous history through rose colored glasses. Did you consciously choose to avoid romanticizing the past?
Amelie Van Elmbt: As you know, there are already many documentaries that have been made about the glorious history of the Chelsea Hotel. At this moment in time, the hotel was about to go through a major change. It was king to be transformed into a luxury hotel, which would ensure that the residents of the hotel would belong to a very different milieu. All of that diversity will be lost and the richness of this place will disappear. We really felt as though we had a responsibility to portray these people because they exist in the shadow of bigger names. Nobody knows that they serve as the fertile soil from which plenty of great artists emerge. It’s always true that some people get out there and get to enjoy their time in the spotlight but nobody really knows what allowed them to achieve that level of success.
Maya Duverdier: The film also serves as a tribute to those great artists who were not able to promote themselves or who were simply content to stay in their room and produce art that fulfilled their own desires. Their stories will be erased by those of wealthy socialites who have less of a creative spirit. It was so important to us to give them a platform and document their existence during this period in time.
One of the film’s main thematic concerns involves the conflict between art and commerce. Do you think that certain scenes will resonate with audience members who feel as though the art that they create will never reach a wide audience?
Amelie Van Elmbt: It definitely resonated with us. There are several people profiled in the documentary who embody the sort of artistic spirit that we want to champion. We also want to ask questions about what it means to be an artist in a world in which we value financial success and public recognition so highly. We don’t necessarily have the answers but I still think it’s important to ask ourselves tough questions. You need to be able to question why we make art and whether it ultimately has any value. I felt that we needed to remind people that great art doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. You make great art when you find a refuge in which you can exchange ideas with other creative individuals. Sadly, those refugees are starting to disappear.
Maya Duverdier: That just disappears. So when you are a young artist with a desire to create, you need to obtain a grant or something in order to remain financially solvent. If you can’t access any financial support, there is no obvious place that you can go to in order to develop your creative process and exchange different ideas. The Chelsea was that place for a lot of people. The Patti Smiths of the world didn’t come from nowhere. The contrast between the glamorous past and the construction work that is currently occurring is significant because there are still people living there. When you’re an artist and you’re living next to all that mythology, it can be difficult to bear the weight of all that history.
Some of that history is referenced through the use of archival footage. Was it difficult to figure out which clips you wanted to use in the film?
Amelie Van Elmbt: That was a tough job to do. It took us a year of editing to really manage because we actually had to track down archivists in order to access some of that footage. It’s not as though you can just find it online. So it ended up being sort of like a treasure hunt. We had to play with different pieces and try to fit them into the puzzle that we had set up. We never really knew what the final image would look like. At a certain point in the process, it all just sort of blended together and started to make sense. It was a long journey to get there and we wanted to take the time to produce something that was true to our approach.
I also wondered whether you took inspiration from any other documentarians in approaching this subject matter from such an empathetic perspective.
Amelie Van Elmbt: We were definitely inspired by the Maysles Brothers. We always find ourselves talking about them because Grey Gardens had such a profound impact on both of us. It encourages the viewer to really live with the subjects of the documentary, instead of viewing them as interviewees. The eccentric qualities embodied by the Bouvier Beales really spoke to us. I guess our film is also kind of eccentric and we didn’t just want to make a regular talking heads documentary. For us, the boundary between narrative features and documentaries doesn’t really exist. From the very beginning, we wanted to offer up a cinematographic portrait of the Chelsea Hotel. That’s what we ended up doing.
Maya Duverdier: We wanted to put people in a position where they could be comfortable around us and didn’t feel as though they had to perform a certain emotion in order to appeal to the audience. We took a very respectful approach where we tried to find a place where people could be themselves and we could become witnesses on the sidelines. Of course there were artistic decisions to be made but we still wanted to be very polite in our approach. We were very patient when it came to communicating with our interview subjects and that gave us a surprisingly high amount of freedom. It was refreshing to be in a place where we had time to find out which avenues we wanted to go down.
You have already touched on this but I do imagine that the editing process was fairly difficult.
Maya Duverdier: It’s a very strange process. I think that when it’s something important, we know that it’ll end up in the final cut. Sometimes we completely rediscover certain footage when we’re going through the editing process. We spent so much time researching and after digging into so much of the hotel’s history, we suddenly found a way to connect our artistic vision with the subject matter at hand. It was a glorious moment.
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I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.
