Serene Velocity

Directed by Ernie Gehr

"Serene Velocity (1970) created a stunning percussive head-on motion by systemically shifting the focal length of a stationary zoom lens as it stared down the center of an empty institutional hallway – thus playing off the contradiction generated by the frames’ heightened flatness and the compositions’ severely overdetermined perspective. Without ever moving the camera, Gehr turned the fluorescent geometry of this literal Shock Corridor (in the then – new State University of N.Y at Binghamton) into a sort of piston-powered mandala. If Giotto had made action films it would be this." – J. Hoberman