Still1969

"Still, one of Gehr’s most subtle and evasive films, literarily superimposes time and space to create ghostly encounters. Still consists of eight shots, all but the last of which are double exposures. Although the framing of the shots vary slightly, all present basically the same vantage point, looking across a lower Manhattan street to a luncheonette and furniture store on the other side, observing the traffic and flow of pedestrians both near the camera and across the street. Because the framing of the double exposure is identical (with the exception of 1 shot where a slight tilting of the camera moves the two images out of alignment), this quotidian street scene becomes criss-crossed with both opaque and transparent traffic and people. The transparent entities move convincingly on the solid surfaces, receding from the camera in perfect perspective, negotiating street and sidewalk with precision. Rather than behaving like dream-like phantoms these transparent beings fit perfectly in this everyday scene. And they are part of it. Their visual permeability results from the camera’s play with time, in which the second image registered makes a less vivid and substantial mark on the film. Like the scratches on the original footage used in Eureka, this criss-cross of people and spectres is the trace of time – of two times laid over each other.  It invokes a fantasy of the street scene as itself a photographic surface, able to retain the trace of all the days traffic, a synchronic image of accumulated life and passage. Seeing two times simultaneously within the same space splits our consciousness between different trajectories and expectations." – Ernie Gehr

"This collapse of separate times into one image creates another push/pull with the experience of depth.  The superimpositions seem to lie on top of the image, yet they move into depth, creating what Gehr describes as a “teasing play with planes.”  But the play with space and position here involves more than tension between layers. The variations on light and shadow on the two levels cause the double-exposures to pop in and out of depth. A shadow on the first level can give the superimposition a sudden burst of solidity. Gehr calls our attention to the multiplicity of depth cues that operate in a film in addition to perspective recession.  The cue of overlap creates much of the amusement of the film, as the vehicles on one level plow through the phantoms on the other. Gehr was particularly fascinated by the way depth cues provided by color (with warm colors coming forward) interract with the logic of space as the red doors across the street seem at points to not only project through the passing phantoms, but even to be in front of more solid passersby…….. Gehr’s game with forms of space explores possible contradictions and tensions and invites us to experience zones of place that remain for most of us terra incognita." – Tom Gunning, The Films of Ernie Gehr, San Francisco Cinematheque, 1993