Warhol's films represent "a relationship between a new form of cinema and a particular type of queerness," Crimp said.
Crimp began his study of Warhol's films after witnessing a conservative movement in gay politics through his work fighting HIV/AIDS. He felt that it was "necessary to retrieve the kind of queer culture" that had an influence on him as a young man, he said. He saw the unique films as a counterweight to current developments in the LGBT community, he said.
"Warhol wanted to make a film a week, and he put a great deal of his creative energy into these movies," he said.
However, due to the technical complexity and length of the films, most were seen by very limited audiences, he said.
For example, Warhol's movie "Empire (1964)" is an eight-hour static shot of the Empire State Building that was created as a "kind of pop gesture," Crimp said.
There were very few venues able to support Warhol's unique style of cinema and "no real audience" for the films before "Chelsea Girls (1966)," Crimp said.
"Chelsea Girls" was Warhol's first widely acclaimed film and received extensive analysis, due in large part to its breakaway from underground cinema into commercial movie theaters, according to Crimp. The film is a three-hour, non-narrative double-screen projection piece that uses "jury-rigged technology" to tell the story of "a bunch of queers and junkies in a hotel," he said.
Warhol experimented with the double-screen format by juxtaposing colors, lighting, framing, emotions and characters, he said. These contrasting elements "misfit together" in a similar fashion to the characters of the film, he said.
Individual screenings of "Chelsea Girls" varied in the amount of time between reels, the speed at which the two plotlines overlapped, the music and the lighting, making each screening "effectively unique," he said.
When it comes to Warhol films, "a different type of attention produces greater rewards," Crimp said.
"It created a sensation when it first appeared but has garnered scant serious critical attention," he said.
Crimp emphasized the experimental nature of each of Warhol's films.
"A lot of people like to think they know what a Warhol film is," Crimp said. "But there is no typicality in Warhol films he was a real experimenter."
Warhol made his films during the early years of the gay liberation movement in the 1960s, and since then "something has been lost" in the formation of gay identity, Crimp said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"Even the word queer' for me is one that suggests an unfixed identity," he said.
The lack of publicity the event received was frustrating, according to Jennifer Williams '12 and Karysa Norris '12, students who attended the lecture after hearing about it from their art history professor. Both students wished more people had been able to attend, they said.
Although she enjoyed the lecture, Williams said she would have appreciated a screening of one of Warhol's films beforehand.
"I don't know much about Warhol, but I want to check out some of his films now," Norris said.
The lecture, titled "Misfitting Together: Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls", was the 12th Annual Stonewall Lecture and sponsored by the women and gender studies program.
The Stonewall Lecture series began in 2000 in an effort to bring lesbian, gay and transgender speakers who have been foundational in LGBT studies to Dartmouth, WGST professor Michael Bronski said in his introduction.
Marina Shkuratov contributed to the reporting of this article.
