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2022. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 8 min.
"Serene Velocity (1970) created a stunning percussive head-on motion by systemically shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens as it stared down the center of an empty institutional hallway – thus playing off the contradiction generated by the frames’ heightened flatness and the compositions’ severely overdetermined perspective. Without ever moving the camera, Gehr turned the fluorescent geometry of this literal Shock Corridor (in the then – new State University of N.Y at Binghamton) into a sort of piston-powered mandala. If Giotto had made action films it would be this." – J. Hoberman
Ernie working his magic.
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 with projections. A ride very much in the present, but due to history and family history, also a journey into and out of time.- Ernie "The GOAT" Gehr
Animation created from early paper films.
Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival. Ranging from home movies to political essays, musical sketches to abstract studies, these “little films” form a unique anthology of cinematic moments. 20 Little Films collects a selection of these works, premiering together for the Viennale’s 50th anniversary at the Locarno Film Festival.
"A poetic visual rendition of morning, and an evocation of my awakening to working with some basic elements of filmmaking – film emulsion responsiveness to light, as well as an initial approach to the relationship between a frame and a shot. My first 16mm work. The beginning of a new day." –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-lane city street. Gehr isolates one or two vehicles at a time, inverting some shots, so that a car hangs from the asphalt like a bat from a rafter, using angles so severe the traffic often seems to be sliding off the earth, and employing a reverse motion so abrupt that the players frequently exit the scene as though yanked from a stage by the proverbial hook. A sparse score of traffic noises accompanies the spastic ballet mecanique...” – J. Hoberman
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 soundtrack work as a reminder of the constant intersections between life’s impulsiveness and beauty. - Peter Knegt
"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 which ended up being my interaction with nature – that’s where 'Flying Over Brooklyn' was recorded. Just looking around, what on earth can I do here? I was looking at this reflection of leaves from trees from our neighbour to one of our fences and became interested and began to look at these reflections, some transformed themselves almost day by day, sometimes it was difficult to really catch some of these – it’s creature-like faces I tended to see there. The shadows were exotic for me, they had quality of the tropics, at the same time it’s flat and there are vertical lines which for me denoted prison in a way – you have these bars there, so it’s a contained jungle and that mean different implications for me. The sound we hear, though somewhat amplified, were recorded with the same camera, not necessarily at that moment." – Ernie Gehr