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Though he is commonly described as one of the most consequential filmmakers in avant-garde cinema and structural film, Ernie Gehr has produced a body of work that defies all definitions and widens our perception of what we call “cinema.” Since the 1960s, Gehr has offered audiences manufactured dreams of light, shadow, and motion, invigorated by an unresolved tension between the limit of the camera’s frame and the scope of viewers’ imaginations. In his own words: “The overriding emphasis in my work, be it film, video, or digital, has always been a sense of consciousness: consciousness about being alive and responsive to what is out there, as well as what one is going through internally.”
Gehr’s inventiveness with the most basic of resources—a small camera, a lens, sometimes a microphone—evokes the experience of cinema’s first audiences, and their awe at the surprising ways in which the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, and other early film innovators framed the world. At the same time, Gehr’s visual experimentation and meticulous observance of the present offer a home for our feeling of displacement in that present; by surrendering our senses to the moving wonders of his films, our role as spectators of the world’s tumultuous flow takes on a renewed sense of purpose. Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic presents recent digital work and 35mm restorations, including world premieres and rarely screened titles. Each program is followed by a Q&A with Ernie Gehr and a special guest.
Organized by Francisco Valente, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film.