# A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory

A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory is a 2007 documentary film directed by Esther B. Robinson. It follows Robinson's inquiry into the truth behind the mysterious 1966 disappearance of her uncle Danny Williams, who was an aspiring filmmaker and a former fan of the artist Andy Warhol.
The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Teddy Award for best LGBT documentary. It also won the New York Loves Film Award at theTribeca Film Festival.

## Synopsis

In 1965, Danny Williams, a former Harvard University student, moved to New York to pursue filmmaking. There, he met Andy Warhol, who had recently retired from painting to focus on filmmaking. Williams fell in love with Warhol and moved in with him and his mother Julia Warhola. A one-time key member of Warhol's Factory entourage, Williams made over 20 films and designed the influential Exploding Plastic Inevitable light show with the Velvet Underground. After Warhol ended their relationship in 1966, Williams returned to his family home near the coast at Rockport, Massachusetts. On July 26, 1966, Williams went for a drive in his mother's car and never returned. His clothes and the car keys were later discovered near the shore, but his body was never recovered.
Despite never having met Williams, his niece, filmmaker Esther Robinson, was captivated by his story. Her examination of his life, his disappearance, and his significance to Warhol's oeuvre as an avant-garde filmmaker is presented in A Walk into the Sea. The film incorporates footage of Williams' films with interviews of his relative and surviving members of Warhol's Factory.

## Cast

* Brigid Berlin
* Billy Name
* Gerard Malanga
* Paul Morrissey
* John Cale
* Callie Angell
* Albert Maysles
* Nat Finkelstein
* Julia Robinson
* Nadia Williams
* David Williams

## Release

The film premiered at the 57th Berlin International Film Festival in 2007. It was also shown at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto, New York's Tribeca Film Festival, and International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Williams' Factory films have also received their first stand-alone public screening.
The film has been screened at various museums and institutions, including the Walker Art Center (2008), Institute of Contemporary Arts (2008), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2011),

## Critical reception

Ryan Gilbey of The Guardian noted hat the documentary proves Williams was "a promising film-maker in his own right."
Nick Schager wrote for Slant Magazine: "Robinson’s doc is an investigation into a mystery with no answer. Interviews with Williams's relatives and former Factory members shed no conclusive light on his vanishing—possibly caused by drug use or depression over being dumped by Warhol—but offer quite a bit of insight into the atmosphere of the Factory, a milieu where collaboration went hand in hand with cutthroat selfishness, and where queen bee Warhol's affection was prone to quickly turn to apathy."
Leslie Felperin, wrote for Variety: "If pic has one major fault, it’s that it errs on the side of discretion and doesn't dig as deep as it might have done into the family dynamics or the wrangle with MOMA over the rights to Danny's films (recounted, curiously in the Berlin Forum catalogue entry, but not onscreen), which the museum had archived. Ultimately, Danny remains a shadowy figure, a structuring absence knowable only by the work he left behind."
A.O. Scott of The New York Times stated that Robinson "does a pretty good job of reconstructing the creative and psychological whirlwind around Warhol," but "Williams himself remains the missing piece, despite clips from 16-millimeter films he shot." Although Robinson interviewed several relatives, including his mother, she "provides little detail about her uncle's life, and virtually nothing about his pre-Warhol existence." He concludes that the film, "one suspects by accident as much as by design, feels tentative and unfinished."

## Awards

The film won the Teddy award for best gay-themed documentary at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival. It also won the New York Loves Film Award at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.