Ernie Gehr

Ernie Gehr (born 1941 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American experimental filmmaker closely associated with the Structural film movement of the 1970s. A self-taught artist, Gehr was inspired to begin making films in the 1960s after chancing upon a screening of a Stan Brakhage film. Gehr's film Serene Velocity (1970) has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Gehr served as faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute. His films have screened internationally, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Musee du Cinema in Brussels and at the San Francisco Cinematheque, and he has received awards and grants from numerous institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship and the Maya Deren Award from the American Film Institute. His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in San Francisco.

In representational films sometimes the image affirms its own presence as image, graphic entity, but most often it serves as vehicle to a photo-recorded event. Traditional and established avant garde film teaches film to be an image, a representing. But film is a real thing and as a real thing it is not imitation. It does not reflect on life, it embodies the life of the mind. It is not a vehicle for ideas or portrayals of emotion outside of its own existence as emoted idea. Film is a variable intensity of light, an internal balance of time, a movement within a given space. - Ernie Gehr, January 1971

Filmography

• 2012 Brooklyn Series II (DV, 10 min.)
• 2012 Brooklyn Series I (DV, 11 min.)
• 2012 Departure (HD, 22 min.)
• 2012 Work-in-Progress (DV, 30 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XIX (DV, 12 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XVIII (DV, 12 min.)
• 2011 Auto Collider XVII (DV, 12 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XVI (DV, 13 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XV (DV, 9 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XIV (DV, 12 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XVIII (DV, 13 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XVII (DV, 14 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XVI (DV, 12 1/2 min,
• 2011 Auto-Collider XV (DV, 11 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XIV (DV, 12 min.)
• 2011 Auto-Collider XIII (DV, 13 min.)
• 2010 Picture Taking [HD]
• 2010 On The Boardwalk At Coney Island (HD, 22 min.)
• 2010 Super Realism (HD)
• 2010 Chambers of Time (HD, 8 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider XII (DV, 13 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider XI (DV, 9 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider X (DV, 13 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider IX (DV, 14 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider VIII (DV, 13 min.)
• 2010 Auto-Collider VII (DV, 13 min.)
• 2010 Mist (DV, 9 min.)
• 2010 Thank you for Visiting (DV, 12 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider VI (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider V (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider IV (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider III (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider II (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 Auto-Collider (DV, 13 min.)
• 2009 19th Century Mechanical Magic Lantern Slides & Dissolving Views (DV, 19 min.)
• 2009 Hurry Up Henrietta (DV, 12 min.)
• 2009 Urban Sightseeing (DV, 14 min.)
• 2008 Abracadabra (DV, 29 min.)
• 2008 The Search for Mechanical Life (DV)
• 2008 Waterfront Follies (DV, 39 min.)
• 2008 New York Lantern (DV, 15 min.)
• 2007 Daily Commute (DV, 23 min.)
• 2007 The Dutch Arrive in New York (DV, 33 min.)
• 2007 10th Avenue (DV, 47 min.)
• 2007 Shadow (DV, 9 min.)
• 2006 Before the Olympics (DV, 15 min.)
• 2004 Greene Street (DV, 5 min.)
• 2004 Workers Leaving the Factory (After Lumiere) (DV, 12 min.)
• 2004 Noon Time Activities (DV, 22 minutes.)
• 2004 Essex Street Market (DV, 29 min.)
• 2004 The Astronomer's Dream (DV, 15 min.)
• 2004 The Collector (DV, 18 min.
• 2004 Precarious Garden (16mm, 13 min.)
• 2003 Passage (16mm, 14 min)
• 2003 The Collector (DV, 18 min.)
• 2002 City (DV, 35 min.)
• 2002 Crystal Palace (DV, 27 min.)
• 2001 Glider (DV, 37 min.)
• 2001 Cotton Candy (DV, 56 min.)
• 1992-96 For Daniel (16mm, 72 min.)
• 1991 Side/Walk/Shuttle (16mm, 41 min.)
• 1991 This Side of Paradise (16mm, 15 min.)
• 1986-91 Rear Window (16mm, 10 min.)
• 1985 Signal - Germany on the Air (16mm, 37 min.)
• 1981 Mirage (16mm, 12 min.)
• 1981 Untitled - Part One (16mm, 30 min.)
• 1977 Untitled (1977) (16mm, 4 min.)
• 1976 Table (16mm, 16 min.)
• 1975 Behind the Scenes (16mm, 5 min.)
• 1974 Eureka (16mm, 30 min.)
• 1972-74 Shift (16mm, 9 min.)
• 1969-71 Still (16mm, 55 min.)
• 1970 Serene Velocity (16mm, 23 min.)
• 1970 Field (16mm, 19 min.)
• 1970 History (16mm, 40 min.)
• 1969 Transparency (16mm, 10 min.)
• 1969 Reverberation (16mm, 25 min.)
• 1968 Wait (16mm, 7 min.)
• 1968 Morning (16mm, 4 min.)

Installations

• 2010 Picture Taking (HD, 9 1/2 min.)(available as either a single channel or a 3-channel work)
• 2010 Surveillance (HD) ((4-channels)
• 2008 Water Front (two 4-channel pieces)
• 2007-08 Water Series (approx.)50 single channel pieces)
• 2006 Crossing The Bowery (3-channels)
• 2005 Ocean Avenue (4-channels)
• 2005 Panoramas of the Moving Image: 19th Century Mechanical Magic Lantern Slides & Dissolving Views (5-channels)
• 2001 Navigation
• 2001 MoMA On Wheels

External links

• Ernie Gehr at Canyon Cinema
• Gehr's profile at 'Making light of it'
• Gehr's profile at Fred Camper's website.
• Ernie Gehr at Hi Beam
• Interview with Ernie Gehr, MUBI