Walter Ungerer
Birth : , New York City, New York, USA
History
Walter Ungerer was born in New York City in 1935 of German immigrants. He studied art and architecture at Pratt Institute, receiving a BFA degree in 1958. He went on to Columbia University receiving an MA and PD in 1964. His first film "The Tasmanian Devil" was made in 1965 while living in a loft in the "flower district" of New York City. His third film "Meet Me, Jesus" gained him national recognition as a film artist through exposure at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. In 1969 "Ubi Est Terram Oobiae?" was included in a world-wide MoMA touring program that furthered his reputation. That year Ungerer moved to Vermont. In 2003 Ungerer moved to Maine, where he continues to produce his work. His most recently completed feature "down the road" debuted at the Syracuse International Film Festival in the Spring 2005, and a retrospective of his films was shown in Kiel, Germany in April 2006. Later in November 2006 Ungerer traveled through northern Germany showing his work. His most recent video installation debuted at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine, March 2006. In 2008 it was installed at the Brattleboro Museum of Art, Brattleboro, Vermont. In December 2008 Echo Park Film Center and the Eqyptian Theatre, both in Los Angeles; hosted programs of Ungerer's recent works including SUCH AS IT IS, EPITAPH, and THE SALT SHAKER AND THE MOON. Ungerer came to Los Angeles for the week of the showings. Presently Ungerer is organizing a program of films by Maine artists.
Director
The film title is an abbreviation for no comment. With all due respects I find this to be an appropriate description of this film, which is based on abstract drawings, obscure images, and distorted sounds.
Director
How the universe evolved, and how humans developed are questions that arise with our awareness of life on the planet. There seems always to be much conjecture about it, but no clear answers. Mystery and wonder are pervasive. This film stems from my thoughts about it. As the images I created evolved into continuous sequences, it pursued a direction hitherto unknown by me until it was a film, and finished.
Director
The film begins with abstract images of continuously changing in color, shape and texture. Slowly it reveals the source and real identity of the original subject-matter, and in so doing has transcended the abstract world for reality. Yet, they co-exist. Time lapse video clips form the basis of this work.
Director
This work is an exploration of digital still camera motion clips I recorded while visiting the downtown art district of Los Angeles. In retrospect one can say the end result is very different from the beginning, as is so often the case. Initially, material shot with a digital still camera of a visit through the art district of downtown LA during “art walk” day, was the starting point. Once it was transferred into a computer editing system, the realistic imagery of people, places and things, was transformed into explorations of shapes, patterns, colors, text, rhythms and sounds. It was stretched, squeezed, turned upside down, continuously repeated and otherwise distorted both in picture and sound…with playful intentions. Some obscured somewhat recognizable images do remain: a face, eyes, sunglasses, a street corner, a police car, a woman singer and an outdoor concert, another woman eating a piece of cherry pie at a restaurant.
Director
The film explores the different shapes and colors of clouds. It probes the space clouds occupy. Through the use of haunting ethereal sounds and ghostlike imagery, the experience of seeing the heavens is interpreted.
Director
Walter Ungerer’s Monarda (2010) has been screening across the country as part of the 2011 Black Maria Film Festival, a traveling program of new experimental cinema. Like much of Ungerer’s work, the 10-minute Monarda explores the mystifying qualities of nature. Beginning with a shot of grass, Ungerer quickly abstracts his images through digital manipulation until they are barely recognizable. Traces of natural forms (leaves, twigs) ground what is an otherwise indescribable procession of images. Though the visuals evade literal synopsizing, there’s a simplicity and concision to the film that allows the viewer to get caught up in their own experience rather than get sidetracked on decoding the filmmaker’s intentions. Monarda instills a feeling of both apprehension and wonder in the viewer. It’s a disquieting film, but one whose subtle craft and atmosphere becomes more impressive over multiple viewings.
Director
Meditations on human destruction composed at land's end.
Director
A woman and a man, both no longer young of age, follow basic routines in their home. Outside at the birdfeeders, birds follow basic routines. As the sun rises and moves across the sky, life passes for all. The film uses a combination of stop motion and time lapse to record. This creates a visual staccato effect, which is also very apparent in the audio track when the two people are talking. Using this technique only small intermittent bits of a conversation are recorded. Much of the talking is omitted leaving newly constructed sentences and meanings.
Director
UNTITLED 2.1.2 uses abstract, hardly recognizable shapes and colors to create a person's emotions as they experience tension and chaos.
Director
Digital stills and video footage of a child on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, are manipulated and obscured to create a nostalgic atmosphere of remembrances. The Amiga computer has now been replaced by the Macintosh. The editing program is the Media 100.
Director
One of a collection of experimental shorts shot on VHS, miniDV or created in the computer, where the results were edited and manipulated by filmmaker Walter Ungerer with various computer software programs.
Director
Walter Ungerer's A Warm Day Comes After A Cold Winter is among a series of experimental films the filmmaker created in the 90s that utilize computer animation and assorted "lo-fi" video artifacts.
Director
A short animation based on the drawings of an elephant and a giraffe by the filmmaker's seven year old daughter Anna.
Director
The film is an improvised story about a young man who meets a young woman in a public place. He attempts to establish a friendship. This situation is played out three times, each time with different characters and different actors in different locations. What occurs unfolds differently with each story. In each situation the actors don't know each other. They respond spontaneously as they create the dialogue and the narrative.
Editor
THE WINTER THERE WAS VERY LITTLE SNOW is a visual mood poem using the barest narrative form to convey the feeling and time of crisis for a man in middle age. His marriage has collapsed; he is without a job; and his father has just died. There is no reality, only an indistinguishable mixture of images and moments drawn from some space in time that could be his past, his present, or his future.
Cinematography
THE WINTER THERE WAS VERY LITTLE SNOW is a visual mood poem using the barest narrative form to convey the feeling and time of crisis for a man in middle age. His marriage has collapsed; he is without a job; and his father has just died. There is no reality, only an indistinguishable mixture of images and moments drawn from some space in time that could be his past, his present, or his future.
Director
THE WINTER THERE WAS VERY LITTLE SNOW is a visual mood poem using the barest narrative form to convey the feeling and time of crisis for a man in middle age. His marriage has collapsed; he is without a job; and his father has just died. There is no reality, only an indistinguishable mixture of images and moments drawn from some space in time that could be his past, his present, or his future.
Max
THE WINTER THERE WAS VERY LITTLE SNOW is a visual mood poem using the barest narrative form to convey the feeling and time of crisis for a man in middle age. His marriage has collapsed; he is without a job; and his father has just died. There is no reality, only an indistinguishable mixture of images and moments drawn from some space in time that could be his past, his present, or his future.
Producer
A sensuous woman, an angry artist, a mysterious puppet maker, suspicious townspeople, mischievous kids; these are the characters in the film.
Writer
A sensuous woman, an angry artist, a mysterious puppet maker, suspicious townspeople, mischievous kids; these are the characters in the film.
Director
A sensuous woman, an angry artist, a mysterious puppet maker, suspicious townspeople, mischievous kids; these are the characters in the film.
Writer
A woman waits for a man at a deserted railroad station somewhere in northern New England. It is the middle of winter. Snow is falling. The two drive to a remote farmhouse. Later two strange children appear at the window, and an old woman summons them away. Isolation, then alienation overcome the couple. The woman has a dream which comes true. She disappears. Nothing is explained. Only footprints remain in the snow that covers the supernatural landscape.
Director
A woman waits for a man at a deserted railroad station somewhere in northern New England. It is the middle of winter. Snow is falling. The two drive to a remote farmhouse. Later two strange children appear at the window, and an old woman summons them away. Isolation, then alienation overcome the couple. The woman has a dream which comes true. She disappears. Nothing is explained. Only footprints remain in the snow that covers the supernatural landscape.
Director
In the kitchen of a Vermont farmhouse, four people come to sit around a table. The silence of solstice holds them together. Before a ritualized meal they each tell a story. Their stories are ominous, yet, as in the first OOBIELAND film (INTRODUCTION TO OOBIELAND), they are incomplete. Earlier, the titular mother has passed on her powers to a young woman. At the close of the film, this young woman enters the farmhouse and, with final simplicity, restores the old order.
Director
Part five, EPILOGUE TO OOBIELAND is a 40 second animation punctuating the entire series much like a period ends a sentence. All together the five parts exhibit an array of techniques in animation, live action theatrical presentation and sound.
Director
Someone attempts to find Oobieland. The realm of artificial sound encountered in the first film (INTRODUCTION TO OOBIELAND) is left behind; there is a terrible silence. The television studio of the second film (UBI EST TERRAM OOBIAE?) is also left behind; big trees and snow populate the visible world in SOLSTICE. Somewhere a boundary is crossed; the viewer is caught up in a cycle of meetings with strange inhabitants of that short space of time we call winter solstice.
Director
The Princess of Oobieland is interviewed in a television studio in New York City. Her responses, sometimes only barely discernible over the whir and clang of obscure machinery, are testimony to the closing of those gateways which we encountered in the first part (INTRODUCTION TO OOBIELAND).
Director
Using hand-painted film, animation and an inventive soundtrack, INTRODUCTION TO OOBIELAND is an exploration of gateways: a repeated series of movements from the familiar and safe to the unknown and dangerous. Cycles are left incomplete. Chases are never consummated; the day ends with no promise of rebirth. In this way the film touches on our oldest instincts, leaving us saddened and scared by the knowledge of a world that will never know freedom through the completion of action; safety through the sanctification of place.
Director
The theme is apparently the birth and growth of civilization, its ultimate destruction and rebirth; however, MEET ME, JESUS is actually about loss: the loss of innocence, dignity and hope. The film's final irony is our usual compensation: "If these wings should fail me Lord, meet me with another pair." MEET ME, JESUS is a compilation film using found footage as well as original material and hand painting on film. —Canyon Cinema
Director
Though birds and people appear to have some similar qualities; affection, caring, tolerance, aggressiveness, belligerence, combativeness; in the scheme of things, we are all waiting our turn in the queue.
Director
A daily record of one year at Mount Battie, Maine. It is a record of the seasons, the changing light from dawn to evening, sunrise and sunset; the changing weather from bright sun to overcast skies, fog, rain and snow; and the changing visitors that come by foot, bicycle, motorcycle, car, truck and camper to make a pilgrimage to the mountain vista that overlooks a small harbor on the coast of Maine, the North Atlantic coastal islands, and the expansive Atlantic Ocean.
