Delirium

Delirium

2020 · 14 min

"It was recorded over Summer of 2020, we were isolating ourselves. We live in the ground floor in an apartment building, we have the full backyard which ended up being my interaction with nature – that’s where 'Flying Over Brooklyn' was recorded. Just looking around, what on earth can I do here? I was looking at this reflection of leaves from trees from our neighbour to one of our fences and became interested and began to look at these reflections, some transformed themselves almost day by day, sometimes it was difficult to really catch some of these – it’s creature-like faces I tended to see there. The shadows were exotic for me, they had quality of the tropics, at the same time it’s flat and there are vertical lines which for me denoted prison in a way – you have these bars there, so it’s a contained jungle and that mean different implications for me. The sound we hear, though somewhat amplified, were recorded with the same camera, not necessarily at that moment." – Ernie Gehr

Directed by Ernie Gehr

Your Rating

Make it a double feature

40m together

Delirium

20 Little Films

Both from Ernie Gehr.

More from Ernie GehrSee all →

Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace · 2011

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

Mirage

"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 sensuous of Gehr’s abstract films may resemble superficially a strip painting by Kenneth Noland. But it is essential to realize that the bands of color Gehr captures come from the world, shot through a simple clear tube that strips away form and lets only chromatic patterns and motion come through. Even in his most abstract films, Gehr is relating to a world outside his consciousness and trying to stake out a relation to it, testing its order and chaos, its beauty and its threats." – Tom Gunning

Cotton Candy

Cotton Candy · 2002

Gehr uses a mini-digital recorder to look back on the Machine Age in the form of San Francisco's soon-to-be-shuttered Musee Mecanique. For slightly more than an hour, Cotton Candy documents this venerable collection of coin-operated mechanical toys—including an entire circus—mainly in close-up, isolating particular details as he alternates between ambient and post-dubbed (or no) sound. By treating the Musee's cast of synchronized figures as puppets, the artist is making a show—but is it his or theirs? Gehr's selective take on the arcade renders it all the more spooky. There's a sense in which Cotton Candy is a gloss on the moment in The Rules of the Game when the music-box-collecting viscount unveils his latest and most elaborate acquisition. (It also brings to mind the climax of A.I.: The DV of the future tenderly regards the more human machine of the past.) (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)

20 Little Films

20 Little Films · 2012

20 Little Films

MovieDocumentary

Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival. Ranging from home movies to political essays, musical sketches to abstract studies, these “little films” form a unique anthology of cinematic moments. 20 Little Films collects a selection of these works, premiering together for the Viennale’s 50th anniversary at the Locarno Film Festival.

Eureka

MovieDocumentary

"This is a film that not only documents a place in time, but a modern spatial vision, a look and technology that makes this street the sort of place it is. And here in this preserved piece of history, one also sees the chemical dance of film grain that makes up the material of Gehr’s own History. We do not simply see Market Street circa 1902, but a film of Market Street, and it is as fascinating as the site itself. Film may in some sense exist indifferent to emotions, objects, beings, or ideas. But early in his work Gehr realized that film, even conceived as a thing in itself, can never exist outside of history. The very dance of grain on the screen acquires a history of its production, its screenings, its viewings. History is the place no place can avoid.” - Tom Gunning

Serene Velocity

Serene Velocity · 1970

Serene Velocity

An experimental short film which shows a time-lapse in the basement hallway of a Binghamton University building.

Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage · 2015

Avant-garde work by Ernie Gehr.

Departure

Departure · 2012

From a train trip home, legendary experimental filmmaker Ernie Gehr creates a triptych cum structural trajectory in which composition and perception convene into a “phantom ride. Departure sharpens the senses as it penetrates a recognizable yet reframed landscape.

Floating Particles

Floating Particles · 2021

Floating Particles

“It’s a mysterious field, this screen rectangle populated by haunting phantasmagoric phenomena, be it representational or just patterns of color, light and darkness. Realism has no place here, but lifelike re-presentations of consciousness and the imagination do. Even in the most fleeting of spaces…. hmm, spaces on a 2-dimensional plane? Never mind! Look at the above still image. Intrigued? Then perhaps the work from where it came might interest you.” - Ernie Gehr

Undertow

Undertow · 2021

“The eyes may be attracted to look left and right – and please let them – but the center is also intriguing and not separable from the rest. Among other things, a side view is transformed into a frontal view, but of course, that is not all.” - Ernie Gehr

Precarious Garden

Precarious Garden · 2004

Precarious Garden

A stereoscopic view of a suburban backyard.

Construction Sight

Construction Sight · 2018

Construction Sight

Ernie working his magic.

Shift

“For Gehr, SHIFT broke new ground, hence perhaps a pun in its title. The film is his first to employ extensive montage. The actors are all mechanical – a series of cars and trucks filmed from a height of several stories as they perform on a three-lane city street. Gehr isolates one or two vehicles at a time, inverting some shots, so that a car hangs from the asphalt like a bat from a rafter, using angles so severe the traffic often seems to be sliding off the earth, and employing a reverse motion so abrupt that the players frequently exit the scene as though yanked from a stage by the proverbial hook. A sparse score of traffic noises accompanies the spastic ballet mecanique...” – J. Hoberman

Street Scenes

Street Scenes · 2017

Animation created from early paper films.

Greene Street

Greene Street · 2004

"a five-minute film of the view west across the Soho street to a brick building. Gehr sat there from one day from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. and shot it with his Bolex camera, one frame at a time. It conveys the settled relief of being home, as against the pace of the monochromatic working day seen in the three prior films. It is closer to his earlier films in its abstraction of forms and play with time-lapse and film speed. In the beginning, the forms are screamingly reddish-orange and incomprehensible, but as the afternoon progresses shadows slip across the surfaces and windows, fire escapes, and bricks become visible: a world is revealed with the clarity of Vermeer’s famed Little Street (1657-8)." - Jason Rosenfeld

Photographic Phantoms

Photographic Phantoms · 2013

Photographic Phantoms

In New York Lantern and Photographic Phantoms, a new narrative lyricism and political outspokenness enters Gehr’s cinema, haunted now by ghosts, from long-ago travels and struggles, that are gifted with an uncanny voice and presence.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter