Esther Robinson
Westbeth Board member co-produces Velvet Underground
NYT Recommendation for 2022 Oscar for Best Picture and Best screenplay

New York Times film reviewer Manhole Dargis recommends Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Screenplay to Velvet Underground
New York Times January 19, 2022

The Reviews

New York Times Best Films of 2021
Like “Summer of Soul,” this documentary revisits the music of the 1960s in a spirit that is more historical than nostalgic. Rather than assemble present-day musicians to pay tribute to their forebears, Haynes concentrates on the Velvets in their moment and on the artistic scene that spawned them. NYT 2021 Best Films

Rolling Stone
“Velvet Underground feels peculiarly attuned to its moment, to even the question of how to properly depict the moment. It knowingly yet searchingly feels its way through the question of how artists become themselves. Which is sort of a dead question — what inspired this? what kind of a mind came up with this? — because we ask it of artists often and are rarely given answers that sound true. Velvet Underground is clearly willing to do the diligence of providing the moods and contexts and backstories at one needs to give that question a bit of factual heft, however much it streamlines much of this in favor of being as capacious as possible. But what I get from, say, peeking behind the curtain of Reed’s upbringing and depressions as I watch this movie isn’t a clear and simple pathway to the man’s art (or heart, for that matter). It is instead the far more intriguing and murky problem of a private life, a creative life that will never fully be known to me.”

-K. Austin Collins Oct 15, 2021
Read the entire review at Rolling Stone

New York Times
“Haynes doesn’t just want you to listen to the reminiscences of band members and their friends, lovers and collaborators, or to groove on vintage video of the band in action. He wants you to hear just how strange and new the Velvets sounded, to grasp, intuitively as well as analytically, where that sound came from. And also to see — to feel, to experience — the aesthetic ferment and sensory overload of mid-60s Manhattan”

A.O. Scott Oct 22, 2021
Read the entire review in New York Times

Roger Ebert.com
Be aware, though, that viewers who come into Haynes’ two-hour movie “The Velvet Underground” looking for a primer on the band, Lou Reed, John Cale, Maureen “Mo” Tucker, Nico, Andy Warhol, Mary Woronov, The Factory, and other famous names and locations may find the experience disorienting. Despite the presence of traditional documentary elements, and a mostly linear story that pulls you through about 20 years’ of cultural history, Haynes and his collaborators make the experience feel new and surprising, assembling the component parts with an eye towards making not just a movie, but an experience—something that you feel, as you might feel the drums during a live music performances: in your gut.

-Matt Zoller Seitz Oct 13, 2021
Read entire review on Roger Ebert.com

Esther Robinson

Westbeth Board member Esther Robinson is an award-winning filmmaker/producer. Her critically acclaimed directorial debut A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory took top prizes at the Berlin, Tribeca and Chicago film festivals. It was re-released theatrically in 2019. As a producer and executive producer her recent titles include (among others): the Academy Award Nominated film Strong Island by Yance Ford, and Memories of a Penitent Heart by Cecilia Aldarondo which premiered in the 2017 season of the PBS series. Additionally, She is an active board member of Women Make Movies, a recipient of Fractured Atlas’ 2014 Arts Entrepreneurship Award and a mom to Otis age 5.

Read more about Esther Robinson

Apple Original Films and Polygram Entertainment present
in association with Federal Films a Motto Pictures and Killer Films production
“THE VELVET UNDERGROUND” a documentary film by Todd Haynes
Associate Producer J. Daniel Torres Line Producer Marissa Torres Ericson Co-Producers Josh Braun Dan Braun Esther Robinson Music Supervision by Randall Poster Archival Producers Wyatt Stone Bryan O’keefe Cinematography by Edward Lachman, asc Edited by Affonso Gonçalves, ace Adam Kurnitz Executive Producers Danny Bennett Pamela Koffler John Sloss Produced by David Blackman Produced by Julie Goldman Christopher Clements Carolyn Hepburn
Produced by Christine Vachon
Directed and Produced by Todd Haynes