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 Non-Industrial Cinema Within Our Cultural Heritage in 1984.
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, the other a short, somewhat poor jersey dress. Both are lanky, weary, a little prudish in front of the camera. Only their luscious, wavy preraffaelit...
“The eyes may be attracted to look left and right – and please let them – but the center is also intriguing and not separable from the rest. Among other things, a side view is transformed into a frontal view, but of course, that is not all.” - Ernie Gehr
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.
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.
Drifting clouds. They are not nice little clouds that invite us to interpret them symbolically; rather they are poisonous and unhealthy clusters, a skin rash of the sky, an impenetrable gray curtain of smog. This is a trailer of impressive tranquility and simplicity. A second look, however, opens...
A no-holds-barred trip into painterly abstraction — where an Agnes Martin painting meets a rapid-fire back-and-forth Gerhard Richter squeegee and the world is swiftly sent asunder.
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 a slanting grade.
“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 imagination do. Even in the most fleeting of...
“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 occasion it was not a productive day for me. As a result I felt a bit stressed out, and began to just drift through the streets. It was a cool and...
"What drives the collector? Textures. Colors. Dust. Phantasmagoric memories and associations. A scattering. The present. The passage of time. Sleep." - E.G.