Barry Gerson

Barry Gerson (b.July 3, 1939, Philadelphia, PA) is an artist-filmmaker who has been making films in various formats, and sculptures and 2D photo/painting works, since the 1960s.
Gerson was born into a Main Line Philadelphia, Pennsylvania family that was among the first to own movie theaters in that area. Gerson completed his first film, The Neon Rose, in the early nineteen sixties. Self-taught, he built his reputation in the 1970s and 1980s with dozens of short silent films, shown in one-person shows at colleges, non-theatrical cinema venues, and museums. He is one of the featured performers in Michael Snow’s 1974 film, Rameau’s Nephew. His work was chosen for the 1981 and 1983 Whitney Biennials and is part of the museum's permanent collection.
Gerson was often grouped with other avant-garde filmmakers such as Snow, Ernie Gehr, Harry Smith and Jordan Belson, as well as earlier figures Stan Brakhage and Robert Breer, in museum series introducing the new work in the 1970s. “Slowness is almost totally sustained in the shorter films of Barry Gerson, who has created rich filmic episodes from such common elements as the shadow of a lucent curtain moving back and forth across a brightly polished floor.”The Mother of The American Avant‐Garde Film by Cecile Starr, New York Times, May 2, 1976
In 2016, the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona held a retrospective of Gerson’s film work alongside newer sculptures. In their catalogue for the event, CCCB wrote, “Gerson's cinema —who began conceiving light sculptures in his room at the age of three— has been placed in the tradition of painters such as Malevich, Mondrian, Kandinsky or Rothko, or the poetic methods of Ozu. Films that observe the appearances of the world with minimalist delicacy to reveal, through light, inner states, mysteries of dreams and those hidden realities where everything is possible.”
In a 1973 piece on Gerson, Anthology Film Archives founder Jonas Mekas noted in his Village Voice column that Gerson was "among the most interesting in the current American cinema."<refVillage Voice Movie Journal, December 20, 1973http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Institutions2/AntholFilmArch/Vol1No1Bulletin.pdf</ref>
==SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY==
2014 - Stretch and Pull (HDVideo, 3 minutes); 2014 - Snow Fall (HDVideo, 6 minutes); 2014 - Water Tension (HDVideo, 6 minutes); 2013 - Fogged Windows (HDVideo, 17 minutes); 2013 - Late Summer (HDVideo, 11 minutes); 2012 - Blue Follies (HDVideo, 13 minutes); 2012 - Spheres of Influence (HDVideo, 5 minutes); 2012 - Passage Through Infinity (HDVideo, 10 minutes); 2011 - Circling the Edge of the Prescient Moment (HDVideo, 8 minutes); 2011 - And the Earth Opened (HDVideo, 8 minutes); 2010 to 2012 - Snows of Reduction (HDVideo, 5 minutes); 2009 - Spiral Weave (HDVideo, 2 minutes); 2009 - The Universe (HDVideo, 7 minutes); 2008 to 2012 - Voluminous Circles (HDVideo, 6 minutes); 2002 - Rolling In My Ears (16mm, 8 minutes); 1982 - Episodes From the Secret Life (16mm, 30 minutes); 1980 - Hidden Tracings (16mm, 3 minutes); 1980 - Exposed Fragrances (16mm, 8 minutes); 1979 - The Secret Abyss; (16mm, 12 minutes); 1975 - Translucent Appearances (16mm, 22 minutes); 1975 - Celluloid Illuminations (16mm, 32 minutes); 1973 - Shadow Space (16mm, 6 minutes); 1973 - Inversion (16mm, 12 minutes); 1973 - Luminous Zone (16mm, 30 minutes); 1966 The Neon Rose (16 mm, 41 minutes)
Category:1939 births
Category:People from Philadelphia
Category:Artists
Category:Filmmakers