Factory Footage Captures Pop Life

"Resurrection" doesn't quite capture it; excavation might be a more appropriate word. Cinematheque's "Pop Resurrection: A Warhol Weekend" consists of four choice entries from the staggering 4,000 films (the most recent estimate) made by the true King of Pop during the 1960s; at least one of these -- Horse -- was previously thought lost. The glittering, damaged Edie Sedgwick is the subject of Outer and Inner Space (1965), a breakthrough mix of film and video projected on two screens and featuring an increasingly unhinged Sedgwick as she conducts "interviews" with unseen people and her image literally multiplies before her eyes. More in the classic camp realm is Hedy (1965). Factory staple Mario Montez plays a hilariously self-obsessed Hedy Lamarr with his usual panache, turning primping into an art form and suffering nobly through a face lift, a shoplifting arrest, and a jury of her homosexual ex-husbands.

Like Hedy, the legendary Horse (1965) flaunts its lack of verisimilitude. The set for this "western" is simply Warhol's grungy Factory, with "superstars" stepping over electrical cords, a real horse indifferently eating hay, and four gay "cowboys" reciting movie cliches and fondling each other. Andy comes and goes in the background as the boys cheerfully invert every western cliche -- a poker game becomes strip poker; a cowpoke's love for his horse flirts with bestiality. This program comes full circle with "Reel J" of the notorious Screen Tests (1964-66). Warhol's sadistic streak is unmistakable here, in 10 (of hundreds) four-minute close-ups in which the subjects were ordered to look at the camera without blinking. Among them is Sedgwick, whose tragic end is foretold in her frozen, frightened stare and barely quivering lip. Screenings begin at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut, S.F. Admission is $7; call 558-8129.

-- Gary Morris