Movies: Ernie Gehr

16mm film (black and white, silent)...

A 16mm black and white, silent film by Ernie Gehr....

“It’s a mysterious field, this screen rectangle populated by haunting phantasmagoric phenomena, be it representational or just patterns of color, light and darkness. Realism has no place here, but lifelike re-presentations of consciousness and the im...

In New York Lantern and Photographic Phantoms, a new narrative lyricism and political outspokenness enters Gehr’s cinema, haunted now by ghosts, from long-ago travels and struggles, that are gifted with an uncanny voice and presence....

“Frolicking on the beach in early June, before the start of the summer season.” - Ernie Gehr...

Cool, delirious, and mysterious. Futuristic, yet ancient. A voyage into a pictorial space-world that seems to be governed by extraterrestrial optical and gravitational laws. (Ernie Gehr)...

“For Gehr, SHIFT broke new ground, hence perhaps a pun in its title. The film is his first to employ extensive montage. The actors are all mechanical – a series of cars and trucks filmed from a height of several stories as they perform on a three-lan...

2022. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 8 min....

“Fun” to make and to watch, as well as satisfying to respond to, ABRACADABRA’s realization is a miracle of sorts. Contemporary and very digital, it also celebrates some of the thrills and spirit of early cinema…...

"The footage for Transparency was recorded at variable camera speeds (from approx. 5 fps to around 40 fps). In this process, when later projected at a constant speed of 24 fps, the image on screen changes in time from a representation of cars passing...

A stereoscopic view of a suburban backyard....

"Reverberation began as an attempt at a portrayal, a representing of a life situation by way of film, and turned in the making of it into a presentation of the physical movement of film itself, stranding the photo-memory of persons/objects/their rela...

"Abstraction in Gehr behaves like an X-ray, revealing unexpected patterns of order under the skin of things. A film like Mirage, one of those most sensuous of Gehr’s abstract films may resemble superficially a strip painting by Kenneth Noland. But ...

A four-channel video work taking inspiration from a lush park environment and the proliferating presence of security cameras in public life....

In this infamous structural film, Ernie Gehr takes to the glass elevator attached to San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel and rides its 24 stories up and down, constantly shifting the orientation of his camera to offer images of the city as a zone of const...

2020. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 8 min....

From a train trip home, legendary experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr creates a triptych cum structural trajectory in which composition and perception convene into a “phantom ride. Departure sharpens the senses as it penetrates a recognizable yet refra...

"Throughout his long career, Ernie Gehr has explored cinema's unique potential to reveal the limits and possibilities of visual perception and the illusionary, subjective experience of time. In these recent digital video works Gehr offers profoundly ...

Abstract short featuring mirrored images....

American avant-garde master Ernie Gehr’s stunning Waterfront Follies (USA) is a work of extended sublime that presents a view of the Brooklyn harbour as it is continuously interrupted by the flow of human interaction. The film’s structure and soundtr...