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28 Jan – 7 Feb 2027
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Serene Velocities

Combined programme | IFFR 1998

Serene Velocity, Table, Mirage, EurekaSerene Velocity is perhaps Gehr’s most famous film and certainly one of his masterpieces. He filmed a hallway, alternating the settings of a zoom lens every four frames. The alternation of setting begins close together, so that the hallway seems to shudder; then the settings become increasing far apart, so the by the end the hallway (or our habits of seeing) seems to tear itself apart. Table also alternates frames, here of a table-top filmed through filters of two different colours, creating an effect rather like an early 3D film seen without glasses. In both these films the image as an image of a stable world pulls against itself and motion becomes the motion of seeing rather than of the subject moving. Mirage, perhaps Gehr’s most beautiful film, used the simplest of devices (a transparent cylinder) to convert the world into bands of unbelievable colour. Eureka uses a early film shot from a trolley car moving down San Francisco’s Market Street circa 1906 to create an exploration of space that is also an exploration of film and the modern environment (Gehr reprinted the film at a slower speed, but otherwise left it as he found it). Tom Gunnning

In this combined programme