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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreCurator 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).”
Read MoreWarren 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.”
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 More“I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship.” —Jonas Mekas
Read More"On October 9th, 1972, half of the music world gathered in Syracuse, N.Y., to celebrate the opening of John Lennon/Yoko Ono Fluxus show, designed by George Maciunas. [The] same day, a smaller group gathered in a local hotel room to celebrate John's birthday." —Jonas Mekas
Read More"Bits of Fluxus events and performances, and picnics with friends (Almus, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, etc.), George's wedding and footage I took of him in Boston hospital three days before he died." —Jonas Mekas
Read MoreIn SCENES FROM THE LIFE Of ANDY WARHOL: FRIENDSHIPS AND INTERSECTIONS, Jonas Mekas continues in his tradition of creating rapid-fire diary films, chronicling not only Andy Warhol, but also the social and cultural excitement that swirled around him, throbbing to a hypnotic Velvet Underground beat.
Read MoreNew York filmmaker born in Paris, Marie Losier begins filming, with portraits of people she met in New York, documenting their lives from what she sees and what she feels after many years in theater and painting which had a great influence on her. Then she uses her imagination to represent these characters or situations as in a tableau vivant. Always with the materiality of the film which requires a certain way of working, her cinema develops a mystery, a magical moment.
Read More¨A living chronicle of the residents of the Béguinage neighborhood – so named because it is situated on the site of the former Brussels béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night.¨
-Boris Lehman
Adolfas and Jonas Mekas arrived in New York in 1949, leaving their native land, Lithuania, behind, caught between Nazi and Soviet occupation. Little by little the camera became their means of expression and cinema invaded their lives. 27 years passed before they could finally return to Lithuania. This is the odyssey the three films intertwiningly recall: Adolfas and Jonas Mekas and Pola Chapelle (Adolfas'ʼwife) are at once actor and filmer. The Mekas brothers rediscover their country and family with their changes, while Pola Chapelle is the external gaze embracing this reunion. Neither Lithuanian nor New Yorkers, where is their home now? As Jonas likes to say “My Country is Cinema.”
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