Ernie Gehr’s digital works make the most of what digital can register in color, detail and presence. Gehr possesses a second sense about the vanishing quotidian. Works of great delectation, acuity, humor, invention and heart that reward viewer concentration and openness. Now you see it now you don’t is operative in our lives at every second and Gehr knows how to commemorate each passing moment. Transformative Illusion and play with appearances are also at the core of his work. Gehr has a deep affinity with Méliès and de Chomon and the great illusionists of early cinema, as well as some of the greatest painters of different centuries. - Mark McElhatten
Mirror of Dreams. 2020. USA. Filmmaker Ernie Gehr. 12 min. Digital.
“A cinematic audio-visual fugue plays out in-time a choreography of interior and exterior spaces, activities, sounds and perhaps longings.” - Ernie Gehr
Back in the Park. 2019. USA. Filmmaker Ernie Gehr. 11 min. Digital.
“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 pleasant afternoon. There were a lot of people relaxing at Bryant Park, so I stepped into the park myself. Within less than a minute, and without a conscious motive in mind, I grabbed the camera out of my pocket and began to exercise my own form of pleasure and relaxation: moving the camera through space, caressing or playing with shapes, and forms as well as shadows. Later on, in spirit of that afternoon and out of the recorded footage, I composed Back in the Park.” - Ernie Gehr
Undertow. 2019. USA. Filmmaker Ernie Gehr. 14 min. Digital.
“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
Brewster, MA. 2011. USA. Filmmaker Ernie Gehr. 11 min. Digital.
“Frolicking on the beach in early June, before the start of the summer season.” - Ernie Gehr
Floating Particles. 2018. USA. Filmmaker Ernie Gehr. 38 min. Digital.
“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 spaces…. hmm, spaces on a 2-dimensional plane? Never mind! Look at the above still image. Intrigued? Then perhaps the work from where it came might interest you.” - Ernie Gehr
Program run time: 86 min.