MIFF Summer Residency: Double Bill - Warhol and Neon

Take a trip down to Bunjil Place for artistically engaging Sunday as we present a unique double bill experience. It all begins with the screening of The 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests as part of the PHOTO 2021 Festival, followed by the Melbourne International Film Festival feature NEON.

A $10 ticket will get you 3 screen experiences, live music performance by Video Video and a selected item from the festival candy bar!

To book visit the Bunjil Place website.

The 13 Most Beautiful Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests, 4.30 pm - 5.30 pm

Between 1964 and 1966 Warhol shot approximately 500 rolls of film of which mostly were portraits of acquaintances, friends and celebrities visiting his iconic studio The Factory. Shot with a stationary Bolex 16mm camera, the subjects were asked to simply sit in front of the camera for a 3-minute timeframe. The subject and camera remained almost motionless creating a seemingly ‘living portrait’. When the Screen Tests were projected they were slowed down often exposing the subject’s mannerisms, vulnerabilities and insecurities.

In 2010 American musicians Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips were commissioned by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust to compose music to accompany 13 selected films from the series. This resulted in live concerts across the USA with large scale projections of the selected screen tests in the background.

In partnership with the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and as part of the PHOTO 2021 program, Bunjil Place is proud to present The 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests. Featuring Paul America, Susan Bottomly, Ann Buchanan, Freddy Herko, Jane Holzer (Toothbrush), Dennis Hopper, Billy Name, Nico, Richard Rheem, Lou Reed (Coke), Edie Sedgwick, Ingrid Superstar and Mary Woronov. These are the 13 films that Dean and Britta wrote a music score for.

Video Video, 5.30pm - 6.30pm

The highly acclaimed synth-pop trio Vidoe Video featuring Matt Sigley, Byron St.John and Matt Doll (The Mavis’s) will provide a live music score to the Warhol inspired screen tests submitted from our community.

Neon, 6.30pm - 8.00pm

A sustainable source of illumination, a creative inspiration and a fading craft, neon shines in Lawrence Johnston's latest film.

Lawrence Johnston has long been obsessed with neon. Although his award-winning film Eternity (MIFF 1994) was about Arthur Stace's handwritten signage, Johnston managed to sneak footage of neon signs throughout. Neon also features in Night (MIFF 2007), and while filming Fallout (MIFF 2013), the director made a special trip to Las Vegas to visit neon museum The Boneyard.

It was there that Johnston decided to make a film celebrating the beauty and romance, the art and science of neon: visually stunning, one of the most environmentally-friendly forms of lighting ever made, and endangered – LED is slowly but surely taking its place around the globe.

Vivid, beautiful and insightful, the MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Neon is the story of this noble element that has so profoundly coloured the modern world.