Side/Walk/Shuttle

United States

1991

37 Min

Color

Currently 4.4/5 Stars.
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DIR Ernie Gehr

Berlinale (Forum)

Synopsis

The initial inspiration for the film was an outdoor glass elevator and the visual, spatial and gravitational possibilities it presented me with. The work was also informed by an interest in panoramas, the urban landscape, as well as the topography of San Francisco. Finally, the shape and character of the work was tempered by reflections upon a lifetime of displacement, moving from place to place and haunted by recurring memories of other places I once passed through. –Ernie Gehr

Director

Ernie Gehr

Ernie Gehr (born 1943) is an American experimental filmmaker closely associated with the Structural film movement of the 1970s. A self-taught artist, Gehr was inspired to begin making films in the 1960s after chancing upon a screening of a Stan Brakhage film. Gehr’s film Serene Velocity (1970) has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Gehr served as faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute. His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in San Francisco. —Wikipedia

Wall

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Chuck Williamson

25Jan13

The city as topsy-turvy site of disorientation and unfixededness. Full of dazzlingly vertiginous topographical movements and patterns. In other words, the ideal companion of BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A METROPOLIS, THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, MANHATTA, et. al. Pretty incredible.

guidannr

8Aug12

Ubber aesthetic, fairly simple in concept, a bunch of vertical tracking shots of Frisco, moving up high into the sky or down to the sidewalk. The sound in the movie is Babel-drone that isn't contiguous with the images, and sometimes is just silent.

Dimitris Psachos

20May11

So this is the weirdest "I'm going to film in an architectural way by reminding myself that it's only a movie, thus I'm allowed to reject the rules of gravity and time-scape" experiment but Gehr is a smarter ventriloquist and just knows how to manipulate your mindset by inviting you to a horizontal-vertical-in-between-of-the-two liturgy of...spatial freedom!

Andrei - Cristian and Matthew Landry like this