Friday, September 18, 2009

13 Most Beautiful

Friday evening, and I spent one and a half hours of it in NYC sitting in a theatre located on the intersection of Broad and South in Philadelphia.
Set against the backdrop of 13 screen test videos shot by Andy Warhol, Dean and Britta (of Luna fame) performed inspired compositions and covers of familiars (e.g., Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground). Each song more riveting from the one before. Yet, the most enchanting aspect of the entire performance were the screen tests of the individual(s) themselves. Warhol filmed each screen test at 16 frames a second (as opposed to the usual 24 frames a second) allowing for him to capture even the slightest twitch, shiver, swallow that often is so subtle to the human eye (or the MTV-generation attention span) that it goes unnoticed and forgotten - the subtleties of human emotion and personality. Mary Woronov says it best in her book - "You would see the person fighting with his/her image - trying to protect it. You can project your image for a few seconds, but after that it slips and your real self will starte to show through. [...] You saw the person and the image." Indeed, altogether at once, you see the layers of the person as they sit in front of the camera for all the 4 minutes of film Warhol had to his disposal. And all of that to a brilliant soundtrack (not forgetting to mention the little autobiographical snippets of the 13 most beautiful that Dean and Britta cared to share with the audience). For just one and half hours, I was transported back to NYC, to a moment in time - lost.

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