The first piece of equipment Ernie Gehr rented from the Millennium Film Workshop, in late 1966, was a light meter (all the cameras has been checked out), which he walked around New York with for a week; this episode is a summation of Gehr’s capacious work: expressive, rigorous reflections on filmmaking itself. Each of the titles in this program, made between 1968 and 1970 and virtually all in MoMA preservation premieres, refine the filmmaker’s exploration of film as a “variable intensity of light, an internal balance of time, a movement within a given space.” The purity, intensity, and curiosity of Gehr’s image making over these vital early years of his career is seen in Morning’s metaphorical evocation of a loft interior as a camera chamber; Transparency’s sensual superimpositions; and the perception-altering film-grain epic History. Reverberation’s melding of re-photography with home movie elements capturing street demolition for the construction of the World Trade Center anticipates Gehr’s ravishing digital works filmed in today’s gentrified Lower East Side. J. Hoberman’s remark on the focal manipulation piece Serene Velocity, the program’s final film, speaks volumes about Gehr’s filmography: “If Giotto had made action films it would be this.”
Program 97 min.
This screening may include flashing and flickering images that can impact people who are sensitive to blinking lights.
Morning. 1968. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. 4 min.
Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. Funding provided by The Film Foundation and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). 35mm
Reverberation. 1969. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. 23 min.
With Andrew Noren, Margaret Lamarre. Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. Funding provided by The Film Foundation and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). 35mm
Transparency. 1969. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. DCP. 11 min.
History. 1970. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. 36 min.
Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. DCP
Serene Velocity. 1970. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. 23 min.
Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation. 35mm