What 1964 Andy Warhol film consists of an eight-hour stationary shot of the Empire State Building? The film is Empire.
Warhol’s Empire is an experimental, silent, black-and-white film built around a single fixed view of New York’s Empire State Building. The footage was shot from the Time-Life Building on the night of July 25–26, 1964, capturing the building from evening into the early morning.
The camera recorded approximately six hours and 36 minutes at 24 frames per second. Warhol instructed that the film be projected at 16 frames per second, extending the running time to eight hours and five minutes. This deliberate slowdown makes the passing of time—not plot, dialogue, or action—the film’s central subject.
The title can cause a date mix-up: the footage was filmed in 1964, but some catalogues and the English Wikipedia article identify the work as Empire (1965), reflecting its premiere and release history. It is distinct from Warhol’s other long stationary film, Sleep, which shows poet John Giorno sleeping.