Warren Sonbert (1947—1995) was one of the seminal figures working in American experimental film. His early films — from 1966’s AMPHETAMINE through to 1973’s CARRIAGE TRADE — are currently available from GME as Digital Site Licenses (DSLs). Sonbert’s montage films will become available from GME later in 2025.
Read MoreGME is proud to distribute films by Jonas Mekas, widely regarded as the Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema, to universities in North America as Digital Site Licenses (DSLs).
Read MoreGartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to announce our distribution of the films of Pierre Clémenti as new 2K digital restorations to North American academic institutions. Though best known as an actor, Clémenti's directorial work constitutes a fascinating and long overlooked chapter in 1960s avant-garde film history.
Read MoreIn his final film SOLEIL, Pierre Clémenti amalgamates the stylistic elements of his previous film (and sole feature), À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU, with influences from his poetry and earlier work as a filmmaker. Via dramatic reenactment, Clémenti reflects on his unlawful arrest in 1972 for drug possession, whereupon he was imprisoned, without trial, for 17 months. The film also features extensive footage of Clémenti’s family and children, including his wife Margareth and son Balthazar.
Read MoreÀ L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU (English translation: IN THE SHADOW OF THE BLUE RASCAL) is set in the underbelly of “Nécrocity,” a city of nightly terrors. In this fictionalized Paris, fueled by heroin and paranoia, an anarchist group (played by Pierre Clémenti’s inner circle) — whose mastermind is a villainous military leader played by Clémenti himself — tries to keep one step ahead of the grip of state power. After 300 kilos of heroin goes missing, a significant wave of crime is catalyzed.
Read MoreDense with hallucinatory visuals and frenetic montages, LA DEUXIÈME FEMME presents a filmic whirlwind through Pierre Clémenti’s family life, as well as his life on film sets as an actor. The title of the piece refers to the artist’s second wife, Nadine, but it also functions as a filmic love letter to his mother, and to artists and Warhol superstars Nico and Viva.
Read MoreSOUVENIRS, SOUVENIRS consists of some of the earliest footage that Pierre Clémenti ever shot. While it is the closest of his works to a traditional home movie, it is notable for featuring footage of Catherine Deneuve during the filming of Luis Buñuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967)as well as Philippe Garrel on the set of his film LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (1969). These rare and fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses of Buñuel’s and Garrel’s films — both of which starred Clémenti — are accompanied by bursts of color that would become Clémenti’s signature as an avant-garde cineaste.
Read MorePositano is an island of the Amalfi Coast that Neptune would have, according to legend, created for the love of a nymph. Not unlike Neptune, Pierre Clémenti’s POSITANO embodies a total love in which family and friends are seized in the same poetic field. Perched on the rocks of the island, the house of Frédéric Pardo and Tina Aumont became, in 1968, a meeting place for the French “undeground.” Clémenti lived in Pardo and Aumont’s house for some time and, in POSITANO, created images of dazzling sensuality.
Read MorePierre Clémenti’s LA RÉVOLUTION N'EST QU'UN DÉBUT. CONTINUONS LE COMBAT follows the actor and filmmaker during the May ‘68 protests, which occurred during the making of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1968 dramatic feature PARTNER in Italy (in which Clémenti starred). The film documents Clémenti’s extensive travels between the demonstrations in Paris and the set of Bertolucci’s film in Rome, thereby capturing his a double life as both activist and artist.
Read MoreShot in 1967 but not released until 1976, Pierre Clémenti's VISA DE CENSURE N°X is an acid-infused experimental whirlwind of color and music featuring a veritable who's who of the French 1960s underground. VISA DE CENSURE N°X showcases an extraordinary range of scenes from Clémenti's life during the late 1960s. The film features a number of influential artists from both sides of the Atlantic, including Viva, Nico, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Philippe Garrel, Tina Amount, Barbara Girard, Étienne O'Leary, Jimi Hendrix, Frédéric Pardo, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, Jean-Marc Momon, and and Clémenti himself.
Read More“Clémenti’s second film is the chronicle of his life as an artist… it was shown in various cuts with live music before its final edit in 1979. Spanning the set of Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD, Maurice Béjart’s ballets, and an encounter with Viva in Andy Warhol’s New York, the film’s episodic quality evokes Clémenti’s peripatetic existence. Its narrative vignettes are Clémenti’s first use of voiceover, bringing intimate sentiment and somber tones to a more introspective work.” —The Museum of Modern Art
Read MoreFilmed in 1968, Warren Sonbert considered THE TUXEDO THEATRE an early version of — or “dress rehearsal” for — the film he would ultimately regard as his magnum opus, 1973’s CARRIAGE TRADE. As in CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert traveled around the world to create a tightly-edited work of polyvalent montage in THE TUXEDO THEATRE. It was his first foray into this style of filmmaking following a series of short films, set to the popular music of the time, that documented his contemporaries (including Andy Warhol’s Factory scene) in mid-1960s New York.
Read MoreAS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY sees Jonas Mekas reconstruct his life through various home movies filmed over the course of three decades. Footage includes picnics and birthday parties as well as significant life events, such as Mekas’ children taking their first steps. Throughout, Mekas offers his own commentary via voiceover about what the viewer is seeing.
Read MoreFilmed from 1964 to 1969, WALDEN is Jonas Mekas’ first completed diary film, composed of moments, people, and events captured with his Bolex 16mm camera. At once intimate and epic in scope, WALDEN vacillates between the New York avant-garde scene of the mid-to-late 1960s (with Mekas’ lens immortalizing such notable friends and colleagues as Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and The Velvet Underground) and quotidian moments from Mekas’ family and day-to-day life.
Read MoreJonas Mekas’ THE BRIG is a filmic rendering of the off-Broadway play of the same name, written by Kenneth H. Brown, which chronicles the abuses and indignities suffered by inmates at a Marine Corps prison. Brown wrote the play based on his own experiences as a U.S. Marine who spent 30 days in a brig for being absent without leave while serving with the Third Marines at Camp Fuji, Japan in the 1950s.
Read MoreWarren Sonbert considered CARRIAGE TRADE (1973) his “magnum opus.” In this film, Sonbert interweaves footage taken from his journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films.
Read MoreELEGY IN THE STREETS was shot by filmmaker Jim Hubbard during the height of the Reagan Presidency, when both Reagan and his political administration ignored the deadly disease that afflicted an endless parade of human beings who ultimately died of AIDS. Hubbard’s film is replete with imagery associated with this era, including Gay Pride marches, candlelight vigils, ACT UP demonstrations, T-shirts embossed with bloody hands, cardboard headstones, police arrests, and the American flag hung upside down. As such, this movie can be viewed as a counterculture tract, a political protest film, an experimental documentary, and a diary film about Hubbard’s late partner and fellow filmmaker Roger Jacoby.
Read MoreWhen Andy Warhol refused to appear in public to accept the 1964 Film Culture magazines annual Independent Film Award, Jonas Mekas made this mock “documentary” of Warhol and a group of his superstars at the Factory. They are presented a basket of fruit which they then consume in slow motion.
Read MoreDuring their trip back to Lithuania, Jonas Mekas made REMINISCENES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, his brother Adolfas Mekas made GOING HOME in collaboration with his wife Pola Chapelle, and Chapelle herself made JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, which both Jonas and Adolfas said was the best of these three films.
Read MoreMade by Adolfas Mekas and Pola Chapelle, GOING HOME is about childhood memories, life's hardships, and the durability of families.
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