Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

We recent­ly told you the sto­ry. In the mid 60s, Andy Warhol quit paint­ing rather abrupt­ly and began some new adven­tures in mul­ti­me­dia. Tak­ing a quick detour into music, Warhol became the man­ag­er, “pro­duc­er” and over­all patron of the up-and-com­ing band, The Vel­vet Under­ground. But film is where he focused his cre­ative ener­gies.

Between 1964 and 1966, the pop artist shot close to 500 short movies — or what he called “screen tests” — of friends, celebri­ties and mod­els. (Find screen tests of Lou Reed, Nico, Edie Sedg­wick, and Den­nis Hop­per here.) And then he shot a series of longer films, or rather “anti-films,” that chal­lenged the con­ven­tions of film­mak­ing. No three act struc­tures here. Above, we start you off with his first film, Sleep (1963). Orig­i­nal­ly Warhol want­ed to make Brigitte Bar­dot the star, but he even­tu­al­ly set­tled for his friend John Giorno, and you get what the title promis­es. 40 silent min­utes of Giorno’s long slum­ber.

Next in the loose tril­o­gy comes Kiss, a 54 minute film built out of a series of short­er films. It’s all cou­ples kiss­ing. Men & women. Women & women. Men & men. And it’s all silent again.

Then we cap things off with Eat (1964), 40 min­utes of watch­ing the starv­ing pop artist Robert Indi­ana gnaw on a raw mush­room and noth­ing more. The tril­o­gy-ender was first screened at the Wash­ing­ton Square Gallery, along with anoth­er long-take film, Blow Job.…

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Andy Warhol’s 1965 Film, Vinyl, Adapt­ed from Antho­ny Burgess’ A Clock­work Orange