A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory

First-time director Esther Robinson proves that a dash of subjectivity in documentary isn’t always a bad thing, showing a remarkable clarity of vision and thirst for knowledge in her superb ‘A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory’. It tells the story of her late uncle, artist, technician, filmmaker and Warholite Danny Williams, whose creative output was cut drastically short due to his strange disappearance in 1966 at the age of 27. At once an affecting trawl through Robinson’s family archive and a jaw-droppingly frank social fresco of the people, places and practices of Warhol’s Factory, the director draws a series of lively interviews from her subjects (Ron Nameth, John Cale, Paul Morrissey et al) and, in the process, says as much about the erratic nature of oral history as she does the plight of her uncle. The film also features one of Williams’s own angular (and highly accomplished) 16mm shorts.