Lost and Found

Grand Central

This film was shot before Grand Central became a tourist attraction and overrun with their lazy directionless gait. It would be a different film if shot today, as the tourists have undermined the flow and energy of the crowd motion. (..) - Jeff Scher

While You Were Sleeping

The fleeting inverted image of the landscape in the raindrops as they swell from drop to drip is an optical phenomenon, but to me it’s pure magic. And then they form streams and pulse hypnotically like luminous quicksilver. (..) I shot this film with a Beaulieu wind-up 16 mm. movie camera from the ’60s and film stock that was at least ten years out of date. The film was shot on a balcony with an awning while my wife napped in the next room with one of our boys. They slept so deeply that even the thunder did not wake them. - Jeff Scher

American Playhouse

American Playhouse is an anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.

Prisoners of Inertia

Indecisive newlyweds get into a series of misadventures while on a day trip from Manhattan to Hoboken, New Jersey.

Trigger Happy

“Trigger Happy” was made with hundreds of objects found on the streets and sidewalks of New York. It began as an attempt to make an animated ballet, but as I was shooting the dance turned rowdy, into more of a nocturnal revel. It was shot on a lightbox with high-contrast film. The backlight silhouetted the objects, making them into graphic icons of themselves. The resulting film is a negative, which turned the objects white and the background black as asphalt. It makes the dance almost phantasmagoric. The trigger I was happy about was on the camera, but the title also fits the velocity of the imagery. Much of the animation happens by the rapid replacement of one object with another. It’s the afterimage in your eyes that animates the difference between the shapes, as one is replaced by another, and another… The music by Shay Lynch perfectly captures the idea of dancing in the streets.” —Jeffrey Noyes Scher

Reasons to Be Glad

I made this film while experimenting with a home made rotoscope. It was drawn on index cards. It's a sort of valentine to film, to life and to Xavier Cugat too. The original 16mm negative was lost when my lab at the time closed suddenly. Boy, I don't miss film at all. (JS)

Yours

An animated short film created by the artist Jeff Scher.

Whiplash

During the years preceeding his death, Sonbert channeled his energy into making Whiplash. His vision and motor skills impaired, he gave his companion, Ascension Serrano, detailed instructions about the assembly of specific shots and the music to be used as a counterpoint to the images. Before his death in 1995, he asked filmmaker Jeff Scher (a former student of Sonbert's at Bard) to complete the film. --Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1996.

White Out

In short, it's a film about winter. And to create it, Jeff Scher composed approximately 2,250 watercolor paintings on paper. Each one is elegant and beautiful in itself, depicting classic snowy scenes, but when composited together, we see incredible movement and fluidity revealed as cold memories bleed into one another.

Crazy Walk

Jeff Scher's short animation, first released in 2020.

Ashtray Ballet

"I made this in 1975 while in college. It was my anti smoking response to Oskar Fischinger's cigarette commercials. It was aired a few times on PBS." –Jeff Scher

NYC

Scher made this in 1976 as a student at Bard College. He printed it to negative years later and liked the way it looked better than the now faded original film.

Nocturn

Animated on a lampshade by Jeff Scher with music by Shay Lynch.

Spin Cycle

A short animation featuring a spinning slice of bread by Jeff Scher with music by Shay Lynch.

Eztli

The watercolor-painted animated short depicts an Ancient Aztec human sacrifice.

Tunnel Vision

Jeff Scher's 2013 ode to underground public transport.