Ernie Gehr

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…

My assigned artwork, The Assyrian Lion Hunt Reliefs expresses a desire for power, permanence and a need to find meaning in the world. The artwork illustrates the Assyrians being led by a king, and as we all know, the kings are the most powerful in a monarchy. The artwork also illustrates the lions being held captive in cages, only released to fight another lion in the ring, showing which lion is the most powerful, almost done as in the gladiators times. The way the artwork shows how to find…

The prevalence of lions in Medieval European literature raises fascinating notions of its importance and purpose in developing characters. While both the lion in Yvain; or, The Knight with the Lion and The Song of the Cid appear to invoke the fear that comes with seeing a ferocious lion, both books differ in their characterization of the relationship between the lion and the main hero. Yvain’s lion became the knight’s loyal and mighty companion while the Cid’s lion is more of a pet and a plot…

While there is no narrative content in the film, it exists to exemplify the essential features of the artform, film, by performing a reflection on itself (178). The feature this film is exploring is movement. Gehr does so by taking still shots of a hallway and alternates between them creating the illusion of movement. The film itself is set up to provide an original philosophical idea to emphasize the necessity of movement in film, thus it is contributing to philosophy of the nature of film…

Gehr states, “Somebody gave me this flip book, just sheets of paper and as you use your thumb to move those sheets, still images take on a life, they start to move, but you can move them forward and backwards, you can flip it around” and then compares it to the sense of movement in Serene Velocity, saying “It deals with space, and what happens on the plane, with the fact that you are working with this deep space and the same time with frames, no movement. It’s all in the way we see. It’s real.…