Ernie Gehr

One of Gehr's least screened and least appreciated films. It's slow for a Gehr work, in that its single view of a street -- the camera never moves -- is presented in real time. And the scene seems somewhat randomly selected: one looks across the street at a few buildings and storefronts, one with a small awning that says "Furniture" and another with a larger "Soda-Lunch" sign. (fredcamper.com)

Shots of cars shot at different angles.

Intercut short and long shots of a hallway with slight variations in contrast, lighting and zoom length.

Short experimental film about a couple waiting in a room.

Short experimental film featuring a kitchen table shot from various angles through colour filters.

Shots at various angles of San Francisco's cityscape.

Ernie Gehr takes a 1903 film that shows San Francisco's Market Street, as photographed from a trolley, and multiplies each frame of the original film eight times, changing its length from 5 to about 38 minutes, while simultaneously, playing with the contrast and light fluctuations within each frame. (imdb)

An experimental film made without a camera

The film has three primary locations: a Berlin intersection, a set of unused train tracks, and a collection of abandoned Third Reich buildings. The soundtrack begins with a seeming fidelity to the spaces shown--wind, cars, and footsteps--but soon a sudden yodel breaks into this synchronicity. (The Brooklyn Rail)

In his first sound film Gehr masterfully abstracts sound and image track into tactile and textural fields. Against a complex arrangement of deeply sonorous urban and machine sounds, the image - 8mm film re-photographed several times - is alive with swirling, pulsing film grain. Filmed at and around the World Trade Center's construction site, Gehr's mysterious film follows a nameless young couple as they drift either in or out of love. (Harvard Film Archive)

Gehr's camera shows drifting clouds on an almost blue sky with various background sounds. (imdb)

"Images were recorded in 1985/86 from the rear window of what used to be our apartment in Brooklyn. The death of my father and an earlier work of mine, Signal-Germany on the Air, were still very much on my mind when this film was initiated. I cupped my hands in front of the camera lens and attempted to make tactile light, color and image. The work shifts from a play between the 'elements' to whipping up a 'storm' out of thin air." (Ernie Gehr)

Lyrical debut film of avant-garde/structuralist filmmaker Ernie Gehr. Morning light streams through a window in Gehr's apartment. As Gehr changes the aperture from open to closed and back again, the light pulsates, in turns overwhelmingly bright and almost vanishing in darkness. A beautiful mediation on the essence of cinema and perception. (Letterboxd)