Barry Gerson

Jonas Mekas talks with filmmaker Barry Gerson.

Mekas begins by announcing upcoming independent and avant-agarde film series and showings and commenting on various works.

Barry Gerson is introduced as a filmmaker and teacher who works with limited bugets. Gerson came to New York from Philadelphia in 1965 because he felt Philly was a cultural vacuum.They briefly discuss his 1963 silent film Neon Rose.

Gerson talks about his move into non-narrative film and how he came to it through his interest in painting. He says the Neon Rose was an attempt to wed two kinds of cinema, the formal and the narrative by taking a certain way of seeing and combining it with the narrative. However, he says he was never satisfied with the end product. At the time he felt the need to do something narrative but later became confident to break through to his own vision in the non-narrative film.

Gerson will be showing five films in New York this season. He talks about his many objectives and that he is concerned with looking at things and when that way of seeing is combined with the rectangle of film. He is interested in space and time and how they work together. Most of his films, he says, contain different layers of space that effect time. He says he has a fascination with the relationships between things and that movement is important. However, he says he has never really had zooms. "I don't want to destroy a certain compositional sense." He says that when he makes a film he has to have about twenty different concepts that have to come together in order to be satisfied.

He wanted to have a film he would work on everyday "but it wouldn't'be a diary." He says it would contain a sense of mystery and compositional sense.
His films usually start out with a structure in mind, "an image comes to me that I feel would fit that structure and it must contain certain forms" He talks about his work with certain colors.

Asked about the ideal presentation of his work, he says, "I can see some of my films being shown in a gallery but I wouldn't prefer that over a showcase situation mainly because you'd have people walking in and out." Gerson says the audience needs to be able to concentrate on the work.

WNYC archives id: 71275