Ernie Gehr

Ernie Gehr

"Born in 1941, he began making eight-millimeter films in the mid-’60s. The precipitating event, he told the writer Scott MacDonald in a 2002-3 interview, was a program of Stan Brakhage films that Mr. Gehr caught in New York on a rainy night. The works excited him partly because in their abstraction and attention to color, texture and rhythm they were closer to his experience of 20th-century painting than of movies, and he continued to seek out more of the same. He eventually ended up at the Millennium Film Workshop and borrowing a light meter from the filmmaker Ken Jacobs (with whom Mr. Gehr shares an interest in early cinema). As he walked around New York reading light, as it were, Mr. Gehr discovered “the character of light” and learned about “cinema’s dependency on light.” (from NYTimes profile by Manohla Dargis.  Full piece here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/movies/ernie-gehrs-films-traffic-in-images-and-light.html?_r=0)

  • Title: Ernie Gehr
  • Popularity: 0.039
  • Known For: Directing
  • Birthday: 1941-01-01
  • Place of Birth:
  • Homepage:
  • Also Known As:
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Ernie Gehr Movies

  • 1968
    imgMovies

    Huge Pupils

    Huge Pupils

    1 1968 HD

    In 1968, Noren finished Huge Pupils, a gorgeous, sensuous, sexually outrageous visual study of his daily life, and part I of an ongoing series he...

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  • 1968
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    A Portrait of Ernie Gehr

    A Portrait of Ernie Gehr

    1 1968 HD

    A brief excerpt from Huge Pupils that has been shown on its own. Portrait of filmmaker Ernie Gehr shown at FIAF's Symposium on the Importance of...

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  • 2010
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    Chambers of Time

    Chambers of Time

    1 2010 HD

    2010. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 8 min.

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  • 1992
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    Side/Walk/Shuttle

    Side/Walk/Shuttle

    6.5 1992 HD

    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...

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  • 1970
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    Serene Velocity

    Serene Velocity

    4.5 1970 HD

    Serene Velocity stares down the center of an empty institutional hallway while shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens, transforming the...

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  • 1968
    imgMovies

    Wait

    Wait

    4.9 1968 HD

    A couple waiting in a room.

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  • 1976
    imgMovies

    Table

    Table

    6.2 1976 HD

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

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    Auto-Collider XVIII

    Auto-Collider XVIII

    1 2013 HD

    A slice of life. An advanced exploration of motor- coordination. Taking to the streets for a new formulation of optical mechanics in a darker key and...

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  • 2014
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    Auto-Collider XX

    Auto-Collider XX

    1 2014 HD

    The 20th installment of the Auto-Collider series. "In 2005 we were still living in San Francisco, we were there for 18 and a half years, I really...

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  • 1970
    imgMovies

    History

    History

    7 1970 HD

    Experimental film made without a lens.

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  • 1971
    imgMovies

    Still

    Still

    3.5 1971 HD

    For about sixty minutes, STILL peers through a New York City street level window, watching the storefronts and windows across the way. People come...

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  • 2003
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    Carte de Visite

    Carte de Visite

    7 2003 HD

    Drifting clouds. They are not nice little clouds that invite us to interpret them symbolically; rather they are poisonous and unhealthy clusters, a...

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  • 1968
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    Morning

    Morning

    1 1968 HD

    Lyrical debut film of avant-garde/structuralist filmmaker Ernie Gehr. Morning light streams through a window in Gehr's apartment. As Gehr changes the...

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  • 2003
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    Passage

    Passage

    1 2003 HD

    Nothing extraordinary. Just a ride on the S-Bahn (elevated train) through a small section of what used to be East Berlin. An anxious journey fraught...

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  • 2020
    imgMovies

    New York Central

    New York Central

    1 2020 HD

    2020. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 24 min.

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  • 1985
    imgMovies

    Signal - Germany on the Air

    Signal - Germany on the Air

    1 1985 HD

    The past is never delineated through Gehr‘s film, an unorthodox “city symphony” composed of largely static compositions of West...

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  • 1974
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    Eureka

    Eureka

    5.7 1974 HD

    Eureka (1974), which lyrically re-photographs a travelogue shot from a San Francisco streetcar, offers the purest expression of Gehr’s deep...

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  • 1969
    imgMovies

    Reverberation

    Reverberation

    1 1969 HD

    Reveberation detaches a few static shots of a posed portrait to expand them for twenty-three minutes.

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  • 2020
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    Mirror of Dreams

    Mirror of Dreams

    1 2020 HD

    “A cinematic audio-visual fugue plays out in-time a choreography of interior and exterior spaces, activities, sounds and perhaps...

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  • 2021
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    Back in the Park

    Back in the Park

    1 2021 HD

    “This is a work that evolved out of play and a sudden impulse. I had been recording footage for a work in Midtown Manhattan. On one particular...

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  • 2021
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    Undertow

    Undertow

    1 2021 HD

    “The eyes may be attracted to look left and right – and please let them – but the center is also intriguing and not separable from...

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  • 2011
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    Brewster, MA

    Brewster, MA

    1 2011 HD

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

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  • 2021
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    Floating Particles

    Floating Particles

    1 2021 HD

    “It’s a mysterious field, this screen rectangle populated by haunting phantasmagoric phenomena, be it representational or just patterns...

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  • 1977
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    Untitled

    Untitled

    1 1977 HD

    As Untitled (1977) opens we see whitish blue streaks close to the camera continually appear and disappear. The background is indistinct, but...

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  • 1977
    imgMovies

    Untitled

    Untitled

    1 1977 HD

    As Untitled (1977) opens we see whitish blue streaks close to the camera continually appear and disappear. The background is indistinct, but...

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  • 1977
    imgMovies

    Untitled

    Untitled

    1 1977 HD

    As Untitled (1977) opens we see whitish blue streaks close to the camera continually appear and disappear. The background is indistinct, but...

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  • 1969
    imgMovies

    Transparency

    Transparency

    1 1969 HD

    An “action” movie in which the processes of recording and projecting moving images are the protagonists and the field of action is the...

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  • 2009
    imgMovies

    ABRACADABRA

    ABRACADABRA

    1 2009 HD

    “Fun” to make and to watch, as well as satisfying to respond to, ABRACADABRA’s realization is a miracle of sorts. Contemporary and...

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  • 2011
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    Crystal Palace

    Crystal Palace

    10 2011 HD

    An ode to digital interlace, which is to video what intervals between frames are to film…

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Mist

    Mist

    6.5 2010 HD

    Silence dominates the work, as does the screen rectangle, which cuts off the “image” from a life time-space continuum and imposes upon...

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  • 2012
    imgMovies

    Departure

    Departure

    1 2012 HD

    From a train trip home, legendary experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr creates a triptych cum structural trajectory in which composition and perception...

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  • 1991
    imgMovies

    Rear Window

    Rear Window

    1 1991 HD

    "[A] view from a Brooklyn apartment sublimates Hitchcock's voyeurism into a frenzied engagement with the visible. The film varies exposure or racks...

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  • 2009
    imgMovies

    Hurry Up Henrietta

    Hurry Up Henrietta

    1 2009 HD

    Film by Ernie Gehr

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  • 1981
    imgMovies

    Along Brighton Beach Avenue

    Along Brighton Beach Avenue

    1 1981 HD

    The film is a half-hour series of brief close-ups of people on the street, shot from a high, but still intimate, angle. In a constant interplay of...

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  • 2015
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    Carnival of Shadows

    Carnival of Shadows

    1 2015 HD

    Ernie Gehr’s large-scale, multiscreen video installation CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS is simultaneously a reflection on early animation and genre...

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  • 1970
    imgMovies

    Field

    Field

    1 1970 HD

    Abstract short film.

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  • 1970
    imgMovies

    Field

    Field

    1 1970 HD

    Abstract short film.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Auto-Collider

    Auto-Collider

    1 2010 HD

    Abstract short featuring mirrored images.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Auto-Collider

    Auto-Collider

    1 2010 HD

    Abstract short featuring mirrored images.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Thank You for Visiting

    Thank You for Visiting

    1 2010 HD

    Images of a city, superimposed.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Thank You for Visiting

    Thank You for Visiting

    1 2010 HD

    Images of a city, superimposed.

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  • 1972
    imgMovies

    Lisa and Suzanne

    Lisa and Suzanne

    1 1972 HD

    Ernie Gehr's short, silent film [...] shows two young girls, almost children still, on a New York street. Both wear blue, one washed out blue jeans,...

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  • 2015
    imgMovies

    Better than Ever

    Better than Ever

    1 2015 HD

    Avant-garde work by Ernie Gehr.

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  • 2015
    imgMovies

    Bon Voyage

    Bon Voyage

    1 2015 HD

    Avant-garde work by Ernie Gehr.

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  • 2014
    imgMovies

    A Commuter's Life (What a Life!)

    A Commuter's Life (What a Life!)

    1 2014 HD

    A Commuter’s Life (What a Life!) gives sculptural dimension and kaleidoscopic novelty to footage shot by Gehr during his commutes from his...

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    Photographic Phantoms

    Photographic Phantoms

    1 2013 HD

    In New York Lantern and Photographic Phantoms, a new narrative lyricism and political outspokenness enters Gehr’s cinema, haunted now by...

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  • 2008
    imgMovies

    New York Lantern

    New York Lantern

    1 2008 HD

    In New York Lantern and Photographic Phantoms, a new narrative lyricism and political outspokenness enters Gehr’s cinema, haunted now by...

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  • 1974
    imgMovies

    Shift

    Shift

    1 1974 HD

    “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...

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  • 2009
    imgMovies

    Waterfront Follies

    Waterfront Follies

    1 2009 HD

    American avant-garde master Ernie Gehr’s stunning Waterfront Follies (USA) is a work of extended sublime that presents a view of the Brooklyn...

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  • 2016
    imgMovies

    For the Birds

    For the Birds

    1 2016 HD

    Digital. Screened as a part of MOMA's 'Mechanical Principles' series

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    Precarious Garden

    Precarious Garden

    1 2004 HD

    A stereoscopic view of a suburban backyard.

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  • 2012
    imgMovies

    Auto-Collider XV

    Auto-Collider XV

    1 2012 HD

    A no-holds-barred trip into painterly abstraction — where an Agnes Martin painting meets a rapid-fire back-and-forth Gerhard Richter squeegee...

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  • 2012
    imgMovies

    20 Little Films

    20 Little Films

    1 2012 HD

    Each year since 1995, the Viennale has asked a great, international director to make his or her own personal contribution to the festival: a...

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Chambers of Time

    Chambers of Time

    1 2010 HD

    2010. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 8 min.

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  • 2020
    imgMovies

    Through the Hoops of Time

    Through the Hoops of Time

    1 2020 HD

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

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  • 2023
    imgMovies

    High-Wire Act

    High-Wire Act

    1 2023 HD

    2023. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 6 min.

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  • 2022
    imgMovies

    Lisbon Views

    Lisbon Views

    1 2022 HD

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

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  • 2023
    imgMovies

    What’s Up!

    What’s Up!

    1 2023 HD

    2023. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 16 min.

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  • 2024
    imgMovies

    Carroll Gardens

    Carroll Gardens

    1 2024 HD

    2023. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Silent. Digital. 22 min.

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  • 2012
    imgMovies

    Work in Progress

    Work in Progress

    1 2012 HD

    In this fascinating exploration of the rich, elusive qualities of the video surface, Gehr layers transparent and translucent repetitions of a complex...

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  • 2020
    imgMovies

    Delirium

    Delirium

    1 2020 HD

    "It was recorded over Summer of 2020, we were isolating ourselves. We live in the ground floor in an apartment building, we have the full backyard...

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  • 2023
    imgMovies

    Pedestrian Activities

    Pedestrian Activities

    1 2023 HD

    "I have a number of doctors that I have to see – getting older and it’s an issue all the time, and they are on the Upper East Side. I...

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  • 2015
    imgMovies

    In Slumberland (Thanks to Winsor McCay)

    In Slumberland (Thanks to Winsor McCay)

    1 2015 HD

    This film accompanies Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic.

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  • 2024
    imgMovies

    Creatures of the Night

    Creatures of the Night

    1 2024 HD

    This film accompanies Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic.

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  • 2023
    imgMovies

    Medicine Cabinet

    Medicine Cabinet

    1 2023 HD

    2022. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 15 min.

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  • 2019
    imgMovies

    Mechanical Magic Lantern Slides II

    Mechanical Magic Lantern Slides II

    1 2019 HD

    This film accompanies Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic.

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    As If

    As If

    1 2013 HD

    A 2013 English language avant-garde film directed by Ernie Gehr. The film screened at The New York Film Festival in 2013.

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  • 2002
    imgMovies

    Cotton Candy

    Cotton Candy

    1 2002 HD

    Gehr uses a mini-digital recorder to look back on the Machine Age in the form of San Francisco's soon-to-be-shuttered Musee Mecanique. For slightly...

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  • 2007
    imgMovies

    Water Spell

    Water Spell

    7 2007 HD

    "Sandy Ding's WATER SPELL is a bold, abstract journey that takes us into the psychic interior of our very cellular structure... and back. For me,...

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  • 2016
    imgMovies

    Sensations of Light, #7

    Sensations of Light, #7

    1 2016 HD

    Humor without a banana peel.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Picture Taking

    Picture Taking

    1 2010 HD

    Picture Taking is focused on "verticality" and urban sightseeing as well as on some of the pictorial possibilities of the HD digital format.

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  • 2017
    imgMovies

    Autumn

    Autumn

    1 2017 HD

    The ever changing Lower East Side.

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  • 2015
    imgMovies

    Transport

    Transport

    1 2015 HD

    The missing chapter of Schivelbusch's The Railroad Journey. A museum piece. Recorded in Berlin, Feb. 2015.

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    Brooklyn Series

    Brooklyn Series

    1 2013 HD

    A translation of volumes in space into a vibratory painted desert and living lines. A new register in an optical Richter scale.

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    The Quiet Car

    The Quiet Car

    1 2013 HD

    Inside/out at whisper speed, symmetries in locomotion churn soft and feathery floating like a dream. A nocture before nightfall. -M.M.

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    Essex Street Market

    Essex Street Market

    1 2004 HD

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

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  • 1981
    imgMovies

    Mirage

    Mirage

    1 1981 HD

    Gehr replaces the camera lens with a half-spherical piece of plastic and filmed around his apartment, producing bands of color and light.

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  • 2010
    imgMovies

    Surveillance

    Surveillance

    1 2010 HD

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

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  • 2017
    imgMovies

    Street Scenes

    Street Scenes

    1 2017 HD

    Animation created from early paper films.

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  • 1975
    imgMovies

    Behind the Scenes

    Behind the Scenes

    1 1975 HD

    A short film by Ernie Gehr.

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  • 1991
    imgMovies

    This Side of Paradise

    This Side of Paradise

    1 1991 HD

    Sounds and images were recorded at the Polish flea-market, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, autumn 1989, a few days before the Berlin Wall came down. An...

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  • 1997
    imgMovies

    For Daniel

    For Daniel

    1 1997 HD

    "Before my son was born, friends would ask me "Will you make a baby movie, now?". "Of course not!", I would answer. Yet, right after Daniel was born...

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    The Astronomer's Dream

    The Astronomer's Dream

    1 2004 HD

    "Replete with visual and audiovisual humor, these works not only celebrate the pleasures of perception, as well as physical spaces and spaces of the...

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  • 2001
    imgMovies

    Glider

    Glider

    1 2001 HD

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

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    Noon Time Activities

    Noon Time Activities

    1 2004 HD

    16mm film (black and white, silent)

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  • 2002
    imgMovies

    Modern Navigation

    Modern Navigation

    1 2002 HD

    "The other Gehr installation, Modern Navigation, is a two-screen piece that shows people looking at fish in an aquarium. It is dark and mysterious,...

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    Workers Leaving the Factory (after Lumière)

    Workers Leaving the Factory (after Lumière)

    1 2004 HD

    16mm film (black and white, silent)

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    Greene Street

    Greene Street

    1 2004 HD

    "a five-minute film of the view west across the Soho street to a brick building. Gehr sat there from one day from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. and...

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  • 2005
    imgMovies

    Panoramas of the Moving Image: Mechanical Slides and Dissolving Views from Nineteenth-Century Magic Lantern Shows

    Panoramas of the Moving Image: Mechanical Slides and Dissolving Views from Nineteenth-Century Magic Lantern Shows

    1 2005 HD

    Mechanical glass slides were manipulated to simulate various kinds of change in the image, and multiple projectors allowed for superimposed and...

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  • 2020
    imgMovies

    Flying Over Brooklyn

    Flying Over Brooklyn

    1 2020 HD

    This short video was commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, one of a number of pieces meant to show how New York artists are working,...

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  • 2006
    imgMovies

    Before the Olympics

    Before the Olympics

    1 2006 HD

    “Before the Olympics is composed out of sounds and images recorded in Torino in November 2005, while the city was undergoing renovations for...

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  • 2007
    imgMovies

    Cinematic Fertilizer – 1

    Cinematic Fertilizer – 1

    1 2007 HD

    Two related videotapes in which Gehr articulates formal connections between organic and geometrical forms, CF1 and 2 adopt the thaumatope structure...

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  • 2006
    imgMovies

    The Morse Code Operator (or The Monkey Wrench)

    The Morse Code Operator (or The Monkey Wrench)

    1 2006 HD

    "One of two new digital works in the all-Gehr program, Morse Code is not only clever; it's unexpectedly funny. Having now spent several years...

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  • 2016
    imgMovies

    Sunday in Paris

    Sunday in Paris

    1 2016 HD

    "Throughout his long career, Ernie Gehr has explored cinema's unique potential to reveal the limits and possibilities of visual perception and the...

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  • 2018
    imgMovies

    Construction Sight

    Construction Sight

    1 2018 HD

    Ernie working his magic.

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  • 2002
    imgMovies

    City

    City

    1 2002 HD

    City is grounded in the familiar everyday world of the street. Yet, the ground often gives way plastically, opening up a dense and paradoxical field...

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  • 2004
    imgMovies

    The Collector

    The Collector

    1 2004 HD

    "What drives the collector? Textures. Colors. Dust. Phantasmagoric memories and associations. A scattering. The present. The passage of time. Sleep."...

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  • 2007
    imgMovies

    Shadow

    Shadow

    1 2007 HD

    A meditation on silence, vanishings, and phantoms of light.

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  • 2013
    imgMovies

    Winter Morning

    Winter Morning

    1 2013 HD

    Inconvenient miracles escape prediction but require attention. Roadblocks are building blocks for daily adventures in seeing. Snowscreens. —M....

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  • 2018
    imgMovies

    Aproposessexstreetmarket

    Aproposessexstreetmarket

    1 2018 HD

    "The second piece on this program, Aproposessexstreetmarket, is what I consider to be the heart of the trilogy. It offers glimpses to the kind of...

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  • 2018
    imgMovies

    Circling Essex Crossing

    Circling Essex Crossing

    1 2018 HD

    "The concluding work is Circling Essex Crossing. In this piece, what arises out of a series of images documenting the construction of Essex Crossing...

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  • 2024
    imgMovies

    By Rail, To Boston

    By Rail, To Boston

    1 2024 HD

    By Rail, To Boston (2024) 17 min. Color. Sound.

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  • 2024
    imgMovies

    South Station

    South Station

    1 2024 HD

    South Station (2024) 19 min. Color. Sound.

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