Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel – Watch the trailer for the new documentary

Following a successful international festival run, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier’s cinematic love-letter to bohemian New York, Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel will be released in cinemas and on demand 20th January 2023.

The legendary Chelsea Hotel, an icon of 1960s counterculture – former residents and regulars have included Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Robert Mapplethorpe and the superstars of Warhol’s factory – an artists’ refuge for over a century, will soon reopen as a luxury hotel.

Caught between fear and frenzy, after eight years of construction and living with scaffolding and constant building, some 51 residents prepare for imminent upheaval as others protest or hole up in their rooms. Against this chaotic backdrop, the film explores the utopian origins that contributed to the Chelsea’s mythical stature and questions the challenges it confronts in the future, as its residents, sold to capitalism, and walls themselves face a turning point in their common history.

In cinemas and on demand 20 January 2023. Amélie van Elmbt & Maya Duverdier will be in London for two Q&As:

18th January – Barbican
19th January – ICA