Year: 1965-1966
Director: Andy Warhol
Between 1964 and 1966 Andy Warhol made almost five hundred Screen Tests of some of the people, famous and anonymous, who passed through his studio, The Factory. A number of these individuals were from the world of poetry, music, fashion, cinema and art, such as Allen Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí.
The procedure was always the same, with Warhol filming his subjects in silence with a static Bolex camera loaded with 16mm black and white film. Each one had to sit for about three minutes, just long enough to run the roll of film through the camera. The Screen Tests were played back in slow motion, extending their running time and giving them a distinctive dream-like quality.
Warhol made two four-minute Screen Tests of Salvador Dalí which present striking innovations on his other recordings. The first was shot with the camera inverted so that Dalí appeared to be upside down. In the second, Salvador Dalí, filmed from the right, stands up and walks out of focus of the camera, so that during the second half of the recording we see only the background.
This film 'portrait' can be thought of a tribute to Salvador Dalí by Andy Warhol, who thus acknowledged as a forerunner of his own conception of art.
During the nineteen sixties, these films were rarely shown in public, but frequently screened at the famous parties Warhol in The Factory.