Sleep (Film)

• John Giorno

Sleep is the first underground experimental film by Andy Warhol. He was shot in July 1963 at the 16- mm format. The premiere took place on 17 January 1964, the film - makers ' Cooperative in the Gramercy Arts Theater in Manhattan instead. A four minute excerpt was shown (together with abstracts of Kiss, Eat and Haircut ) to a composition by La Monte Young at the New York Film Festival in September 1964.

Action

The black and white silent film shows a length of almost six hours the Beat poet John Giorno while he sleeps. He is known for having introduced a completely new aesthetic into the art of film. In fact, there is nothing else to be seen as a naked sleeping man.

Background

The film made ​​because of his poverty action sensation. Supposedly Warhol kept the unmoving camera continuously on Giorno and in the ratio 1 whose sleep was to 1. But that 's not entirely true. Warhol later explained that he had the whole " a bit doctored ", " to get a better line." The boredom that arises in the viewer, only comes into existence if he did not look closely, because it is deliberately by a rhythmic repetition ( " loops " ) undermined by sequences and thus contrary to the much alleged inaction and superficiality Warhol a document for its very resolute approach of cinematic disillusionment and aesthetic manipulation of "reality."

Sleep is the first film ever made in the art historical tradition of Baroque still life painting and minimalism of John Cage and a La Monte Young, whose work with Warhol grappled at this time. It is known that he saw during the filming of an organized Cage performance of Eric Satie's Vexations composition that will surely influenced him in cutting the film.

Reviews

" One with the term" documentary " hardly just to be nominated film work of Andy Warhol: The artist watched by the camera four and a half hours a sleeping friend. "