In his 2001 documentary Absolut Warhola, Polish-German director Stanslaw Mucha investigates the myth of Andy Warhol in his ancestral homeland in eastern Slovakia, a place he has dubbed the “Ruthenian Bermuda Triangle.” Mucha took his cameras to Miková and Medzilaborce and visited with the local Rusyns, among them members of Warhol’s extended family.
The Rusyns do not come off well in the film. In the first scene, the director is driving down a street asking passersby how to get to Medzilaborce, and each person gives different, mostly contradictory, directions. It goes downhill from there. It’s hard to say where the fault lies, though it is likely 50/50 the Rusyns’ own fault and that of the director.
Warhol’s relatives say that they never knew much about Andy, just that he was a painter. They didn’t know whether he painted houses or pictures. He sent them boxes and boxes of artwork, such as painted shoes, which they promptly put to good use. One of his relatives gleefully remembers how she loved to wear the shoes he sent. Her favorite pair had one green shoe and one red one.
Debates over Warhol’s sexuality are frequent in the film, with many interviewees insisting he was married, and none able to accept the idea that he was gay. At one point, Warhol’s cousin Michal Warhola exclaims “I don’t believe it. No homosexual has ever come from Miková.”
Roma also play a big role in the film, and the Rusyns generally come off as racists and bigots to American eyes. Asked why Roma are not allowed to visit the Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce, director Michal Bycko says that “we don’t admit people who don’t smell nice, don’t wear nice clothes and who steal from us. We don’t let filthy people in.”
Later in the film, museum staff read off the museum’s bank account number in hopes that viewers will donate money.
Originally printed in Outpost Dispatch, Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2004.