In concept, Ernie Gehr's "Eureka" is quite simple. Like earlier films from structuralist filmmakers, such as Hollis Frampton's "Lemon" (1969), the film focuses entirely on the element of lighting and its use within the frame, with stark contrasts as compared to soft shadowing as in most conventional films. To achieve this concept, Gehr goes in a different direction than others: using a piece of archive footage and slowing down the film in order to play with said contrasts, rather than doing a more in-detail look at lighting as a tool. In terms of being an interesting film, "Eureka" is more just an experiment than anything else, with most of the interest coming from the historical aspect than what the filmmaker seeks to create.
The setting is Market Street 1906, and the footage is a silent documentary film entitled "A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire". The entirety of Gehr's work on the film is to slow it down 5x and bring down the image quality so low that the light and dark parts of the image are severely emphasized. Being one who has watched and reviewed a ton of silent films, I can't say this effect is particularly impressive when presented on its own: plenty of silent films could look like this, and because of how the medium worked back then, there are similar poor prints where the contrasts indeed look as stark as in here. When one views the original film used for this short, it's easier to see how heavily doctored the print is and hence maybe be able to get what Gehr was trying to do better. The concept remains interesting, but the execution carried out on footage of this era is no surprise if one is already familiar with the fact plenty of 1906 films and otherwise already looked this bad (without even trying). As a result, and while not ignoring what the filmmaker's intentions were, much of the interest in this film comes from seeing the actual historical footage rather than any artistic standpoint.
The setting is Market Street 1906, and the footage is a silent documentary film entitled "A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire". The entirety of Gehr's work on the film is to slow it down 5x and bring down the image quality so low that the light and dark parts of the image are severely emphasized. Being one who has watched and reviewed a ton of silent films, I can't say this effect is particularly impressive when presented on its own: plenty of silent films could look like this, and because of how the medium worked back then, there are similar poor prints where the contrasts indeed look as stark as in here. When one views the original film used for this short, it's easier to see how heavily doctored the print is and hence maybe be able to get what Gehr was trying to do better. The concept remains interesting, but the execution carried out on footage of this era is no surprise if one is already familiar with the fact plenty of 1906 films and otherwise already looked this bad (without even trying). As a result, and while not ignoring what the filmmaker's intentions were, much of the interest in this film comes from seeing the actual historical footage rather than any artistic standpoint.
