We celebrate the completion of several new works by Ernie Gehr with three programs of his films spanning thirty-five years. Gehr has been called a “filmmaker's filmmaker” (J. Hoberman). Whether using film or digital video, working with abstract or representational images (or the slippage between them), Gehr's work is about discovering the properties and possibilities of cinema. For Gehr, cinema is neither a reflection of life nor the portrayal of ideas or emotions; he wrote in 1971 of film as “a real thing” and “not imitation.” The contradictions between a still and a shot, persistence of vision and other optical effects, questions of framing and perspective, properties of video fields, and thresholds of perception are just some of the subjects of his work. But his cinema also brings us profoundly back to the world, to observations about family, displacement, urban life, and the significance of place. Thus Gehr's films and digital work embody both a history of cinema and a cinema of history. They ask us to look carefully and thoughtfully and to perceive, in all senses of the word.
Ernie Gehr lives in San Francisco and teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. He will be our guest at all three programs.
Kathy Geritz
Film Curator