Ernie Gehr Movies

"Film in its primordial state in which patterns of light and darkness are still undivided. Like the natural order of the universe, an unbroken flow...

"Before my son was born, friends would ask me "Will you make a baby movie, now?". "Of course not!", I would answer. Yet, right after Daniel was born...

City is grounded in the familiar everyday world of the street. Yet, the ground often gives way plastically, opening up a dense and paradoxical field...

Mechanical glass slides were manipulated to simulate various kinds of change in the image, and multiple projectors allowed for superimposed and...

"This mysterious, delightful film opens with a sound collage of jazzy music and voices played against a black background. After a few minutes, there...

"Abstraction in Gehr behaves like an X-ray, revealing unexpected patterns of order under the skin of things. A film like Mirage, one of those most...

A Commuter’s Life (What a Life!) gives sculptural dimension and kaleidoscopic novelty to footage shot by Gehr during his commutes from his...

Ernie Gehr’s large-scale, multiscreen video installation CARNIVAL OF SHADOWS is simultaneously a reflection on early animation and genre...

Two related videotapes in which Gehr articulates formal connections between organic and geometrical forms, CF1 and 2 adopt the thaumatope structure...

The ever changing Lower East Side.

Ernie working his magic.

“Before the Olympics is composed out of sounds and images recorded in Torino in November 2005, while the city was undergoing renovations for...

An ode to digital interlace, which is to video what intervals between frames are to film…

“Fun” to make and to watch, as well as satisfying to respond to, ABRACADABRA’s realization is a miracle of sorts. Contemporary and...

By Rail, To Boston (2024) 17 min. Color. Sound.

Inside/out at whisper speed, symmetries in locomotion churn soft and feathery floating like a dream. A nocture before nightfall. -M.M.

2023. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 6 min.

2020. USA. Directed by Ernie Gehr. Digital. 24 min.

16mm film (black and white, silent)

"Replete with visual and audiovisual humor, these works not only celebrate the pleasures of perception, as well as physical spaces and spaces of the...