Movement: Anxiety And Movement

Anxiety and Movement Serene Velocity by Ernie Gehr and So Is This by Michael Snow are two films built from constraints that seem to rely on similar understandings of motion and, in these understandings, evoke similar emotive responses. In these two films, we are presented with velocities. These velocities are causes of tension, frustration, and anxiety. Serene Velocity was filmed in one night in 1970 in a hallway of a building at the University of Binghamton. In a way, the film was made before it was ever filmed for it was designed and planned under constraints. The constraints were: the camera had to be positioned in one spot, it could not move, the focal length of the each lens used could change, and each new lens added had to bring the image farther down the hall way. Gehr shot a couple frames at a time starting with the widest lens and then moving into a tighter lens, then back to the widest lens, and back to the tighter lens until he finally made it to the end of the hallway. This jagged, quantized movement of the image is very subtle and relaxed in the beginning but becomes increasingly severe by the end. The viewers eyes are focused to the middle of the frame by black lines made from the right angles of the floor and walls and ceiling connecting, that of a perspective drawing, that all converge at the center of …show more content…
Each word is shown for a varying amount of time. Some words are shown for only one frame such that it is nearly impossible to read them while others are shown for up to a minute. The text we see in the film is filled with self-referential sentences, puns, vulgarities, and commentaries on other films. Because of these discussions and how they are mixed together, we are given a narrative that is only understood as a narrative until well through the film. This narrative has to be pieced together like that of a crossword puzzle. And by the end of it, the viewer is