"The Empire State Building is a star!" Andy Warhol. In its original format, Empire was as much a happening as a film. That is, it happened, over time-eight hours to be precise. So our 44-minute extract is necessarily a different film, and a different experience, than the one that Warhol intended. (Although as Peter Gidal writes, "Even reading about an eight-hour film alters one's capacity to respond to [a] three-minute one...") Empire consists of an image of the Empire State Building as filmed on June 25, 1964 from the 44th floor of the Time-Life Building. The sun inches through the sky and slowly sets; the mist moves about the building; the floodlights illuminating the top thirty floors of the "tallest building in the world" come on-and we have just divulged the climactic moment of the film. Warhol was on the same Wavelength as Michael Snow and Claude Monet before him; Empire is probably as pure and pristine a portrait of time and light as the cinema can afford. Yet it has another quality in its title, "Empire," which resonates through the silence of the image. In this context Steve Dwoskin's comments on Sleep apply here as well: "Sleep...is about us and about the man sleeping. Why us? Because there is nothing to watch but us."

• Directed by Andy Warhol. Co-directed by John Palmer. Photographed by Jonas Mekas. (1964, 44-min excerpt, Silent, B&W, 16 fps, 16mm)