Which poet appears asleep throughout Andy Warhol’s 1963 film Sleep?

John Giorno appears asleep throughout Andy Warhol’s 1963 film Sleep.

Sleep is a silent black-and-white film showing Giorno, a poet and Warhol’s then-lover, sleeping. Warhol filmed the subject from several angles and edited the material into a work that runs for about five hours and twenty-one minutes. The film turns an ordinary private act into an extended study of time, stillness, and repetition.

A common mix-up is to identify Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, or another Factory figure as the sleeper. Those people were important in Warhol’s circle and appeared in other films, but Sleep centers on Giorno. The film’s title describes its entire subject rather than a narrative plot.

Sleep is one of Warhol’s earliest major films and an important example of his challenge to conventional cinema. Its extreme duration also anticipates the long, observational structure of Empire, made the following year.