Ernie Gehr

Serene Velocity (1970)

Ernie Gehr's structuralist masterpiece SERENE VELOCITY is a hypnotic film which is nothing more than a rapidly edited, rhythmic piece consisting of two shots of an office hallway (one long shot, one zoomed-in close up). Our persistence of vision makes us believe that this film is a perpetual zooming in and out from one end of a hallway to another. Rather, it is a carefully edited and timed film, which consistently cuts back and forth between these two shots. The result is a mesmerizing piece which, as it progresses, treats the eyes to much profundity out of something so simple. We begin to notice the perfect geometry of the composition as the lines of the hallway converge to the center. The film becomes some kind of cosmic heartbeat, as this meticulously timed work of art becomes visual music. There is no beginning, middle or end."---IMDB

Les Blank

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)



An episode in Herzog's history of mock-heroic self-sacrifice [jumping into a cactus bush, walking from Munich to Paris in a blizzard], "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" is a documentary short in which the German director fullfils his promise to Errol Morris that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever completed his first film (Gates of Heaven.)

The film features Herzog boiling his shoes (the ones he claims to have worn when he made the bet) in garlic and herbs for 5 hours. He eventually eats one of them before an audience at the premier of the film.

Blank went on to direct Burden of Dreams (1982), a feature-length documentary about the making of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

George Kuchar

I, An Actress (1977)



George Kuchar, in typical form, outcamps and outacts [in his appropriately bad sense] his titular actress Barbara Lapsley in this low-fi, plotless and nearly themeless film 'about' directing.