January 04, 2014 in Recently Added, Photography, Digital Arts
BIOGRAPHY:
Walter Ungerer is a longtime filmmaker and artist of international reputation, beginning with the underground film scene of NYC in the early 1960s, continuing through to his own experimental short films and features in Vermont from the late '60s to the 21st Century. He was born in Harlem, New York in 1935 of German immigrants. He studied art and architecture at Pratt Institute where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in 1958. Ungerer enrolled in post-graduate studies at Columbia University, graduating with a Master of Arts (MA) in 1969.
Simultaneously with his educational studies, Ungerer worked as a freelance cameraperson and editor. He turned to independent personal filmmaking in 1964, after returning from Nigeria, where he was the cinematographer for a television special. He learned his basic filmmaking skills working on various productions: The Cool World, a theatrical film directed by Shirley Clarke; and Freedom for Thy People, a United Church of Christ documentary shot in Nigeria. He produced his own experimental films Meet Me, Jesus and A Lion’s Tale soon after. Then came the OOBIELAND films, which gave him national recognition as an artist. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) included Ubi Est Terram Oobiae? Part Two of OOBIELAND, in a program that toured the world, representing filmmaking in the United States. Over the next few years the OOBIELAND films (there are five parts), received awards at such experimental film festivals as Ann Arbor, Foothill, Bellevue and Baltimore.
In 1969 Walter left New York for a job teaching filmmaking at Goddard College in Vermont. He tapped into resources at the college, namely personnel for cast and crew (including BREAD AND PUPPET THEATRE) for the longer narrative films he was just beginning to produce. For thirty-three years he lived in Vermont creating feature length experimental narrative films: The Animal, The House Without Steps, The Winter There Was Very Little Snow and Leaving the Harbor; using local actors.
In the late twentieth century several factors changed Ungerer’s way of working. He was no longer able to find funding for his projects, though he was the recipient of national and regional awards: American Film Institute filmmaker grant, National Endowment on the Arts grant, National Endowment of the Humanities grant, and Vermont Council on the Arts grants. Ungerer moved from Vermont to Maine in 2003. His methods are now different, methods he began to accept at the end of the twentieth century, working with computer editing systems and dslr cameras. Nonetheless, he still relies on an intuitive approach to decision making with a predilection for the themes of nature, earth, the unknown and unknowable.
Presently Ungerer resides in Maine where he continues to make films and videos; organizing a program of films by Maine artists.
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