Not Guilty + New Rose Hotel
Eye on Art: Not Guilty + New Rose Hotel
The name Abel Ferrara evokes uproar and controversy. Always accompanied by admiration for this filmmaker from The Bronx, NY. Screening of a digital restoration of Not Guilty: For Keith Richards (1977) by Ferrara and Babeth VanLoo, followed by neo-noir sci-fi thriller New Rose Hotel.
Media artist, filmmaker and producer Babeth VanLoo (1948) spent a long time in the US, where during the seventies she studied film and visual art at the San Francisco Art Institute and became involved in the emerging punk scene.
Abel Ferrara was one of the artists and filmmakers she met there. Together with him, (co-direction), in 1977 she made the short experimental film Not Guilty: For Keith Richards (16mm, 3'). Ferrara plays Rolling Stone Keith Richards, who had been arrested on drug charges that same year in Toronto, Canada.
Uncompromising filmmaker
VanLoo’s contemporary Abel Ferrara (1951, The Bronx, New York) was for a long time seen as a provocative filmmaker who wasn’t interested in making serious film art for connoisseurs. Put another way, the intensity with which he sought to explore the deepest bowels of sleazy New York and the darkest underbelly of the human soul did not always go down well.
With films such as The Driller Killer (1979, about a psychotic artist who sets off armed with an electric drill to sort out people he sees as scum) and extremely violent productions such as revenge fantasy Ms. 45 (1981) and gangster story King of New York (1990), Ferrara was seen as a morally reprehensible maker of exploitation films. His works were labelled ‘video nasties’ and subjected to a ban (The Driller Killer in the UK).
Visual flair
At the same time, Ferrara's uncompromising endeavour was always appreciated (‘An independent filmmaker should be able to say anything’), as was the quality of his actors (including Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken), and the visual flair and spiritual intensity of his work.
Ferrara told stories about tortured souls plagued by big city neuroses, fears and traumatic experiences, packaged in hyperbolic imagery and with subversive socio-political commentaries – such as the greatly appreciated Bad Lieutenant (1992, starring Harvey Keitel), often seen as his masterpiece.
In the neo-noir sci-fi thriller New Rose Hotel (1998), adapted from a William Gibson cyberpunk story, Ferrara stepped into the digital twenty-first century. Who is who and what is what in this virtual reality? Does what happens really happen, or is it a projection from the future? “You're dead, in case you didn't know it.”
Babeth VanLoo present, more Ferrara
Babeth VanLoo will be present for the Q&A after the film; to accompany the restoration of Not Guilty: For Keith Richards, in October Eye will also be screening the Ferrara films Ms. 45 (1981) and Mary (2005).
Programme
Not Guilty: For Keith Richards (Abel Ferrara & Babeth VanLoo, US/NL 1977, 16mm, 3’)
Short experimental film on a sensational case from 1977: Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ arrest on charges of possession of (and suspected dealing in) narcotics in Toronto, Canada (possible sentence: 7 years). A critical commentary on the media and the Canadian public prosecutor, who engaged in a witch hunt that took advantage of Richards’ rock ‘n’ roll fame. Ultimately, the judge sentenced Richards to give a free concert at a school for the blind. Ferrara (‘Jimmy’) plays the role of Keith Richards. Screening of a digitally restored version of the sole remaining analogue copy, donated to the Filmmuseum by VanLoo.
New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrra, US 1998, 93’) (Eng spoken, Dutch subtitles)
Neo-noir sci-fi thriller based on a cyberpunk story by William Gibson from 1984 dealing with futurist industrial espionage. Ferrara hired his favourite actors Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken to play two agents hired by a Japanese business to lure a German scientist away from his employer; Asia Argento plays the femme fatale who brings her considerable charms to bear.
What follows is a visually stunning evocation of a near future in which malevolent big companies dictate citizens’ lives in close collaboration with a corrupt government. ‘Real’ and ‘unreal’, past and present, are almost impossible to tell apart in Ferrara’s elliptic, raw narrative of a virtual reality ruled by greed, desire, betrayal and inexpressible fears. ‘X’ (Dafoe), ‘Fox’ (Walken) and ‘Sandii’ (Argento) travel through an atomised world in which everywhere is nowhere and nowhere is everywhere.
A French film critic described New Rose Hotel (with supporting roles for John Lurie and Annabella Sciorra, among others) as an “an endless loop, an abyss into which we must leap, a black hole engulfing us, a film phantom, a film memory, all the more haunting for being incomplete, fragmented, still to be rounded off”. Sounds like a glowing endorsement to us.
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Production year
2026
Length
126 min.
Country
NL
Part of
Eye on Art
Eye on Art is a programme on the intersection between film and other arts. Eye on Art keeps up with current events, with presentations on contemporary artists and programmes that coincide with important exhibitions, manifestations and Eye activities.
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