Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick & Kipp Stagg

Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick & Kipp Stagg records two figures in long, unbroken takes that let the camera shape our attention. Instead of plot, the film presents sustained portraits, showing Edie Sedgwick as she shifts expressions, poses, and moods, while Kipp Stagg contributes a quieter counterpoint. The steady framing and minimal action turn ordinary gestures into the subject, making the viewer aware of time passing and of the ways identity can be performed for the lens. There's no explanation offered, only the observation itself, so the piece works as a study in presence, celebrity, and the strange intimacy of being filmed. The result rewards slow viewing and clearly asks you to consider how fame is partly created by the camera's attention.

Made in 1966, the film was directed by Andy Warhol as part of his Screen Tests series, shot at The Factory in New York, and it stars Edie Sedgwick alongside Bima Stagg, recorded as spare, direct portraits without elaborate staging.

This short experimental piece didn't get a mainstream theatrical release, so there are no box office figures; it circulated in underground screenings and galleries, later appearing in museum programs focused on Warhol's film work and in retrospective festival lineups regularly.

Though brief, the film contributed to Edie Sedgwick's aura as a 1960s icon and helped solidify Warhol's method of treating film as portraiture. Artists and critics point to Screen Tests as influential on later video art, celebrity photography, and museum shows about pop art. It appears in pop culture books.

Critical attention has mostly been archival and scholarly rather than mainstream review; curators highlight themes of presence, the gaze, performance of identity, and how minimal film form can produce an almost forensic awareness of time and attention in a simple face-to-camera study. Scholars use it to discuss repetition and celebrity.