advance a philosophical argument with a lack of movement and an emphasis on the recording process. Gilberto Perez characterized the building's design as a descendant of Bauhaus architecture, calling it "barren and dehumanizing". He interpreted Serene Velocity as "neither a celebration–nor exactly a condemnation" of Bauhaus minimalism. Legacy Serene Velocity received a positive reaction from many of Gehr's contemporaries, including Ken Jacobs, Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, Richard Foreman, Steve Reich, and Andrew Noren. However, the film received little coverage from the press upon its 1970 release, save for a mention by Jonas Mekas. In 1972, Bob Cowan wrote in his column for Take One that Serene Velocity was "one of the few really unique films I have seen during the last few years…It is rare that a film, which on the surface seems to be only a technical tour-de-force, can lift one to such emotional heights as it develops from surprise to surprise." Serene Velocity cemented Gehr's reputation as a structural filmmaker. He demurred to the term, stating "I don't know what that word really means–[Labels] stop people from actually seeing, actually experiencing the work." Serene Velocity is part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress named the film "culturally significant" and entered it into the National Film Registry. The film was preserved in 2006 by The Museum of Modern Art, which enlarged the original 16 mm print to 35 mm. Director Laura Poitras began making films while taking a course that Gehr taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. The first film Gehr screened was Serene Velocity, and Poitras has identified it as an influence on her work. For their 2008 short film Lossless #4, Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin used a digital reproduction of Serene Velocity as source material. They fed it through a motion estimation algorithm to create a vector representation of the apparent motion in the film. In the 2012 Sight & Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, Noël Carroll listed Serene Velocity in his submission. See also List of American films of 1970 Minimalist film Maximalist film Notes References External links Ernie Gehr links page 1970 films 1970s avant-garde and experimental films 1970 short films American silent short films Films directed by Ernie Gehr Films shot in New York (state) Non-narrative films Silent films in color United States National Film Registry films 1970s