Empire is a 1965 American black-and-white silent art film by Andy Warhol. When projected according to Warhol's specifications, it consists of eight hours and five minutes of slow motion footage of an unchanging view of New York City's Empire State Building. The film does not have conventional narrative or characters, and largely reduces the experience of cinema to the passing of time. Warhol stated that the purpose of the film was "to see time go by." A week after the film was shot, experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas (who was cinematographer for Empire) speculated in the Village Voice that Warhol's film would have a profound influence on avant-garde cinema. In 2004, Empire was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, who deemed it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Synopsis Empire was filmed at 24 frames per second, and is meant to be seen in slow motion at 16 frames per second, extending its -hour length to 8 hours and 5 minutes. The film consists of a stationary view of the Empire State Building lasting the entirety of the running time. The film begins with a blank white screen, a result of the camera being calibrated for nighttime filming. As the sun sets almost imperceptibly, the figure of the building emerges and its details become clearer. As the sun sets further, the building is enveloped in darkness. The building’s floodlights are turned on, illuminating its upper levels and spire. Lights in the windows of other structures go on and off. In the background, a beacon atop the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower flashes at intervals corresponding to every 15 minutes in real time (it flashes a single time every 15 minutes and at hour it flashes the time of day). Eventually, the floodlights go dark and the image in the remainder of the film is nearly total darkness. At three points in the film, the reflections of the crew, including Warhol, are seen in the windows of the Rockefeller Foundation office, where the work was filmed, as the office lights were not shut off before the crew started shooting after changing the film magazines. Production The initial idea for Empire came from John Palmer, a young filmmaker affiliated with Jonas Mekas. Palmer had been sleeping occasionally on the roof of Mekas's Film Maker's Cooperative, which had an impressive view