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Belgium, France, Netherlands · 2022
1h 20m
Director Amélie van Elmbt, Maya Duverdier
Starring
Genre Documentary
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For generations, the Chelsea Hotel has been home to a host of iconic artists, from Mark Twain to Stanley Kubrick to Patti Smith. Dreaming Walls is an elegy to the Chelsea Hotel's bohemian origins and a tribute to its last long-term residents, who have weathered the ever-changing landscape of the hotel and New York City at large.
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
The film avoids providing too much context, a choice that contributes to the spectral atmosphere. The directors aren’t after a news piece; they’re just listening to voices that continue to echo in the corridors.
The Playlist by Christian Gallichio
There’s simply too many stories to contain about the Chelsea, but “Dreaming Walls” does well to show how the ghosts of the residents past can, hopefully, inform the hotel’s future.
In remaining present, with the past and future swirling feverishly, the film is a deeply poignant and moving love letter to those that remain, who “rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” as Dylan Thomas once wrote. Someone’s got to make a stand for the last vestiges of the soul of New York City, and “Dreaming Walls” beautifully captures their fight and their dreams.
The film presents a contemplative elegy for a hotel whose history is (still) being eroded, but by focusing on the literal walls (and how they, of course, can’t actually talk) only further removes the voices of the very people who live (and dream) inside of them
Beauty and loss hold hands in Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, an intimate and impressionistic documentary about New York’s storied Chelsea Hotel from Belgian filmmakers, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier.
RogerEbert.com by Marya E. Gates
It’s in exploring the iconography of the hotel that the documentary shines the brightest. Van Elmbt and Duverdier are clearly well-versed in the works that were created on the grounds, or by former residents, and do their best to imbue their film with the same timeless cool that pulses through them.
The Film Stage by Michael Frank
A moving, devastating piece of filmmaking.
Los Angeles Times by Noel Murray
What results is an illuminating new way of seeing this old building — not just as an historic landmark where amazing things happened long ago, but as a place where people have actually lived full lives, finding shelter and inspiration in its haunted halls.
We’re invited to dream along with the filmmakers, without a lot of background, footnotes or interviews with experts or the celebrated folks who once lived there.
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