A-Z Streamline Titles

Roger Jacoby (1944—1985) was a pioneering experimental filmmaker whose wildly improvisational, hand-processed works showcased a painterly and diaristic approach and, in his last films, a fervent political consciousness. His filmmaking career spanned from 1972 until his untimely death due to complications from AIDS in 1985, during which he completed eight films. Gartenberg Media is pleased to distribute four of these films — 1974’s DREAM SPHINX OPERA, 1976’s L’AMICO FRIED’S GLAMOROUS FRIENDS, 1980’s HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL PART I, and Jacoby’s final film, 1982’s HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL PART II — as Digital Site Licenses to academic and cultural institutions worldwide. These titles were recently restored by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive through the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Avant-Garde Masters Grant.

Like its predecessor, HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL PART II sees Roger Jacoby fuse his distinctive hand-processed visual style with a newfound political consciousness. This film in particular, made shortly following Jacoby’s HIV diagnosis, exemplifies the adage “the personal is political.” It is undoubtedly his most intimate and moving work.

”HOW TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL began, said Jacoby, as ‘excerpts from a compilation journal work begun in 1979. It is an ironic title — there's nothing sexually explicit about the film.’ But the film is richly sensual... In every scene, the emulsion captures the images, enhances, then betrays, overpowers and destroys them, as the patterns and color reshape the filmed reality into a different landscape.” —Kathleen Tyner, Cinematograph

"In L'AMICO FRIED'S GLAMOROUS FRIENDS, which is built around a pas de deux by Ondine and Sally Dixon... the relationship to traditional dramatic narrative is rather obvious; the actors are in well-defined roles and are recognizable in them, and the films are as such accessible. More or less. And it is this more or less quality in which I am most interested; because the drama isn't the main object of his presentation, rather a component in Jacoby's total formal approach to film." —Carmen Vigil, Museum of Modern Art program notes, Field of Vision

Ondine and Sally Dixon “star” as ecstatic 19th century lovers in Roger Jacoby’s first home-processed film. Nickelodeon imagery, school children of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Botanical Conservatory are seen throughout.

Gartenberg Media is pleased to present Ernst Lubitsch's landmark work of German silent cinema, 1922's THE LOVES OF PHARAOH, as a Digital Site License, now available to North American academic institutions. To inquire about purchasing this title for institutional use, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

In 2008, GME President Jon Gartenberg programmed Paula Gaitán’s experimental documentary DAYS IN SINTRA at the Tribeca Film Festival. 18 years later, GME is pleased to distribute Gaitán’s landmark film as a Digital Site License to academic and cultural institutions in the United States.

GME is pleased to distribute the new omnibus film FRAGMENT, commissioned by the Asian Film Archive. This release is an important expansion of GME's deeper reach into Asian cinema and contemporary short and experimental films, including works from Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, among other countries.

In THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY (2011), Abigail Child brings together three separately created films – CAKE AND STEAK (2004), THE FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU (200—5), and SURF AND TURF (2011). These three films provide a multifaceted and incisive commentary on female identity.

WHIPLASH is the final film by Warren Sonbert, a globe-spanning collage haunted by themes of mortality. Sonbert made WHIPLASH in the years following his HIV diagnosis; his vision and motor skills impaired, he gave his companion, Ascension Serrano, detailed instructions about the assembly of specific shots and the music to be used as a counterpoint to the images. Before his death in 1995, he asked filmmaker Jeff Scher (a former student of Sonbert's at Bard) to complete the film. WHIPLASH was also completed with assistance from the Film Preservation Project of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, of which GME President Jon Gartenberg was Program Director. The film premiered posthumously at the New York Film Festival in 1997.

Warren Sonbert described DIVIDED LOYALTIES as a film “about art versus industry and their various crossovers.” According to film critic Amy Taubin, “there is a clear analogy between the filmmaker and the dancers, acrobats and skilled workers who make up so much of his subject matter.”

Curator Jon Gartenberg writes: “In FRIENDLY WITNESS, Sonbert returned, after 20 years, to sound. In the first section of the film, he deftly edits a swirling montage of images — suggestive of loves gained and love lost — to the tunes of four rock songs. “At times the words of the songs seem to relate directly to the images we see... at other times words and images seem to be working almost at cross-purposes or relating only ironically. Similarly, at times the image rhythm and music rhythm appear to dance together, while at others they go their separate ways.” (Fred Camper).”

In Warren Sonbert's HONOR AND OBEY, soldiers march in formation, a tiger stalks through the snow, religious processions wind through the streets, and palm trees wave in a tropical breeze. As brightly colored images of authority figures blend into scenes of cocktail parties, this 21-minute silent film flows along with the grace of a musical score built on complex tensions hidden among notes.

Warren Sonbert’s THE CUP AND THE LIP screened in the 1987 Whitney Biennalie, where it was described as “continu[ing] his series of cinematic diaries, composed of sequences and shots recorded during his travels. One of his most striking color films, THE CUP AND THE LIP portrays people at ease as private individuals and at attention as representatives of state. Although personal in tone, it is a political text with mediates on the nature of authority.”

A WOMAN’S TOUCH demonstrates the evolution of Sonbert's work from an in-camera editing style to the perfection of a montage strategy. The film is also inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s MARNIE (1964), which features a number of motifs; most notably, the color red. In A WOMAN’S TOUCH, the color red is seen throughout much of the film.

NOBLESSE OBLIGE is masterfully edited work featuring imagery Sonbert filmed of protests in San Francisco following the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Councilman Harvey Milk at the hands of Dan White. Sonbert modeled the structure of this film on Douglas Sirk’s TARNISHED ANGELS (1957). Sirk himself appears at the end of the film, engaging in conversation, over coffee, with filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler.

Warren Sonbert described DIVIDED LOYALTIES as a film “about art versus industry and their various crossovers.” According to film critic Amy Taubin, “there is a clear analogy between the filmmaker and the dancers, acrobats and skilled workers who make up so much of his subject matter.”

Warren Sonbert described his 1976 polyvalent montage film RUDE AWAKENING as being “about Western civilization and its work; activity ethic and the viability of performing functions and activities.”

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) is a puzzle box of a film, and one of the most influential in the history of cinema. It was created out of a collaboration between its avant-garde nouveau roman writer (and occasional filmmaker) Alain Robbe-Grillet and its director Alain Resnais. In the film’s hypnotic treatment of space, time, and memory, it ushered in a new era of cinematic modernism.

Set in the 1930s during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Douglas Sirk’s THE TARNISHED ANGELS chronicles three days in the lives of a trio of flying-circus performers, headlined by former World War I fighter-pilot hero Roger Shumann (Robert Stack) and his beautiful wife, LaVerne (Dorothy Malone). Romantic complications arise when newspaper reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson) falls in love with LaVerne while covering their daredevil aerial show.

In Curtis Harrington’s NIGHT TIDE (1961), a sailor on shore leave named Johnny (Dennis Hopper) becomes fascinated by a woman, Mora (Linda Lawson), who poses as a mermaid in an oceanfront carnival. As their relationship blossoms, Johnny realizes that Mora is more than a sideshow illusionist. She seems to be a descendent of the mythical sirens of the sea, and is under the mesmeric control of a mysterious woman (Marjorie Cameron) who beckons Mora to return to her home beneath the waves.

Ida Lupino focused on social issue films that dramatically brought to the fore such taboo subject matters as serial killers (THE HITCH-HIKER) bigamy (THE BIGAMIST), rape (OUTRAGE) and out-of-wedlock birth (NOT WANTED). In 1949’s NEVER FEAR, Lupino tackled the taboo subject matter of illness; specifically, polio. The film follows Carol Williams (played by Sally Forrest, who also starred in Lupino’s NOT WANTED). Carol is a beautiful young dancer whose body, and promising career, is suddenly crippled by polio. Carol’s dance partner and fiancé Guy Richards (played by Keefe Brasselle, a featured actor in 1951’s A PLACE IN THE SUN), wants to see her through her illness, but the angry, self-pitying Carol prefers to go it alone. Her father subsequently takes her to the Kabat-Kaiser Institute for rehabilitation, where she meets fellow patients like Len Randall on her road to recovery.

1924’s THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN), directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (PHANTOM, 1922), is one of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement. Emil Jannings stars as an aging hotel doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of his duties and uniform, which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride.

Ida Lupino’s 1953 feature THE HITCH-HIKER is the only classic American film noir directed by a woman. In 1998, the film was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. In THE HITCH-HIKER, Ray (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert's (Frank Lovejoy) fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker (William Talman) they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. The two friends plot an escape, but the hitchhiker's peculiar physical affliction — an eye that never closes even when he sleeps — make it impossible for them to tell when they can make a break for it.

Presented in this new 4K restoration by Minerva Pictures-Rarovideo USA and L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST (1970) is both a searing study of sexuality and politics set in 1930s Italy and a feat of opulent visual storytelling. Bertolucci combines a rich visual aesthetic with an emphasis on composition, design, and camerawork to craft a devastating portrait of the kind of personality that allows fascism to flourish. Widely considered Bertolucci's masterpiece, THE CONFORMIST was adapted from a novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia and boasts an authentic Art Deco look crafted by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti. The film also features a score by the acclaimed composer Georges Delerue.

While actress Hedy Lamarr was celebrated for her extraordinary beauty, her looks overshadowed her extraordinary intellect. BOMBSHELL recounts Lamarr’s beginnings as a rising movie star in Europe, her brief marriage to Friedrich Mandl (who was a weapons manufacturer for Hitler), her subsequent escape to America, her rise to Hollywood stardom, and her creation of brilliant inventions — namely frequency-hopping — to aid American allies in World War II.

Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville’s BOB LE FLAMBEUR melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. It could be argued that Jean-Luc Godard could not have made BREATHLESS (1959) without BOB LE FLAMBEUR. (Melville even later appeared in BREATHLESS, as a director interviewed by Jean Seberg, proclaiming his desire “to become immortal and then die”). When François Truffaut first saw the film — the first of Melville’s series of films noir — he exclaimed, “This is the kind of film that we want to make!”

Jean Luc-Godard’s ALPHAVILLE (1965) cleverly amalgamates the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. In his endless journey to subvert cinematic conventions and tropes, Godard took the archetype of the “male anti-hero” and transposed him into a sci-fi setting.