GIRL WITH BLACK BALLOONS
Selected for 'Best of Fest' at the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival, GIRL WITH BLACK BALLOONS won the metropolis grand jury prize at the 2011 DOC NYC Film Festival.
GIRL WITH BLACK BALLOONS is a multi-faceted portrait of Bettina – a reclusive, artist living within the confines of Manhattan’s legendary lodgings. Said to be the most beautiful woman to have ever lived in the Chelsea Hotel, Bettina has hidden away in her studio for over forty years. She sleeps on a lawn-chair and surrounds herself with boxes stacked from floor to ceiling, filled with works of her art of which a fraction has been shown only once, in a 1980 exhibition in the OK Harris Gallery, whose owner Ivan Karp launched the careers of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Filmed over two years, Bettina lets down her guard and reveals a treasure trove of her artwork- boxes filled with constructivist-inspired multi media pieces. But it's come at a huge cost.
Van der Borch boldly ventures beyond the limits of mere portraiture and injects herself into the story, speaking in voiceover about the way the solemn older women has infiltrated the filmmaker’s dreams. Like “Grey Gardens” reimagined by Chris Marker, “Girl With Black Balloons” maintains a hypnotic effect, evolving into a perceptive diary film about the nature of all creation--including Van der Borch’s pregnancy.
— Indiewire, Eric Kohn
“You captured her soul.”
Dutch documentary director Corinne van der Borch discovers artist Bettina, who has lived and worked in the Chelsea Hotel since the 60s. As the hotel has literally closed its doors for renovation, GIRL WITH BLACK BALLOONS is an ode to one of New York’s most fascinating citizens and to the city’s adventurous spirit in decades gone by.
"I promise you'll remember this film for a long time to come."
— THOM POWERS, programmer Toronto Int'l Film Festival
— Academy-award winning director Barbara Kopple.