One of the most unexpected films of the last Berlinale about the inhabitants of the abandoned manor Gray Gardens in East Hampton and New York Bohemia, mounted from documentary shootings of photographer Peter Beard, cinematographer Jonas Mekas, and artist Andy Warhol.
The Swedish documentary filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson is a specialist in dealing with rare archives, which shed light on the already established cultural myths. That Summer is a kind of prequel to the film by the American directors the Maysels brothers, Gray Gardens, which tells the story of Jacqueline Kennedy's relatives, Edith Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and her daughter Little Edie. But it turns out that even before the Maysels, the story of the Beale family became of interest to the photographer Peter Bird and Lee Radziwill, the cousin of the Younger Edie, who spent the summer of 1972 at the Andy Warhol estate in Montauk (as stated in the film, this is the only place Warhol went outside of Manhattan).
Mick Jagger plays with his sons, Lee Radziwill lounges on the seashore, Truman Capote poses against the backdrop of Warhol's house, Little Edie poses for the camera, while her sister talks with construction inspectors, plumbers, and electricians—these are different parts of the same universe, in which East Hampton was considered an affordable place to purchase real estate, and Big and Little Edie had not yet become muses for a whole generation of filmmakers, artists, and Broadway directors.
Director Göran Hugo Olsson. USA, 2018, 80 min
16+