10/16/2009
Ernie Gehr, the renowned New York-based, experimental filmmaker, will be the recipient of the 2009 Stan Brakhage Vision Award from the Starz Denver Film Festival (SDFF), announced Ron Henderson, SDFF co-founder. Gehr will be honored during the program, "An Evening with Ernie Gehr" on Sunday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. at the Starz FilmCenter. Phil Solomon, associate professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and friend/colleague of Stan Brakhage, will present Gehr the coveted award. Gehr's program will include the premieres of his three most recent short films, Abracadabra Turn-of-the-Century, Crystal Palace and Waterfront Follies. Gehr is an award-winning, internationally-recognized artist of the "Structural" film movement during the 1920s. He began his career in the 1960s after becoming inspired by viewing a Stan Brakhage film. Throughout his career, Gehr has made more than 50 films including Glider, This Side of Paradise, Mirage, Shift and Morning. His 1970 film Serene Velocity, which established Gehr's reputation as a major filmmaker, was selected for preservation and named by the Registry of the Library of Congress as "one of our national treasures." In 1995, Gehr became one of only two filmmakers to receive the Adaline Kent Award Exhibition. "Gehr is a brilliant artist and one of the foremost experimental filmmakers of our time," said Henderson. "With such an elegant yet understated style of avant-garde cinema, Gehr is absolutely deserving of this award." Many of Gehr's films are in the collection of major museums and film archives around the world and have screened at esteemed institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Musee du Cinema in Brussels, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Cinematheque. Additionally he has received awards from organizations such as the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been honored with a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in recognition for his work. The Stan Brakhage Vision Award is presented annually to film artists whose work celebrates Brakhage's courage, boldness, uncompromising integrity and vision. Throughout his 50-year career, he made nearly 400 films; his final film, Chinese, he completed in bed before he died on March 9, 2003.