Girl with Black Balloons
The legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York hides many stories behind its more than 200 doors. Old ones and new ones. Dark chapters and happy endings. Everyday moments of magic and extraordinary turns of life. There is no other building in the city of which so many people think, when passing it: “If only these walls could talk.”
Dutch filmmaker Corinne van der Borch has managed to open one door. Not just any Chelsea Hotel door, that is (if such a thing exists). It’s the door that is answered – if you’re lucky - by the most beautiful women to have ever lived in the Chelsea Hotel, according to residents. And they who know what they’re talking about.
It is also fair to say that she is one of the most eccentric creatures, not just in the hotel, in the whole city of New York.
Her name is Bettina, her age stays unrevealed and she has taken refuge in her studio on the fifth floor since the sixties, surrounded – or better said: built in - by hundreds and hundreds of her stunningly beautiful art works, stacked from floor to ceiling. She sleeps on a lawn chair in a tiny corner. She can only reach it by maneuvering carefully through boxes, paintings and collages that have never seen the light of day.
Being in BettinaÂ’s studio is like being in her head. Van der Borch gained access to this incredible place, to the life of this reclusive woman who guards her creativity and her artwork with herÂ… well, with her life. She is as much a prisoner as a freed soul.
The result of two years of visits by the filmmaker, just her and her camera, is a fascinating, endearing and sincere documentary.
During humorous, intimate and provocative moments, first-time director Corinne van der Borch develops a delicate friendship with Bettina. She gradually opens the door to the world of one of New York's last true unconventional characters, until we get a view thatÂ’s never seen before.