Emerging from the primordial soup of glamour, gutter sleaze, and feverish creativity that was New York’s 1960s underground culture, the Velvet Underground redefined music with its at once raw and exalted blend of experimentation and art-damaged rock and roll. In his kaleidoscopic documentary The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes vividly evokes the band’s incandescent world: the creative origins of the twin visionaries Lou Reed and John Cale, Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, and the explosive tension between pop and the avant-garde that propelled the group and ultimately consumed it. Never-before-seen performances, interviews, rare recordings, and mind-blowing transmissions from the era’s experimental cinema scene come together in an ecstatic swirl of sound and image that is to the traditional music documentary what the Velvets were to rock: utterly revolutionary.

4K digital master, approved by director Todd Haynes and cinematographer Ed Lachman, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
Alternate stereo soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Haynes and editors Affonso Gonçalves and Adam Kurnitz
Outtakes of interviews shot for the film with musician Jonathan Richman, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and actor Mary Woronov
Haynes and musicians John Cale and Maureen Tucker in conversation with writer Jenn Pelly in 2021
Complete versions of some of the avant-garde films excerpted in the movie
Teaser
Optional annotations identifying the avant-garde films seen in the movie
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A 2021 essay by critic Greil Marcus