GME is pleased to present TOGETHER, SONG OF THE GODBODY, HERMES BIRD, DEVOTIONS, and SCATTERED REMAINS in a curated package, titled Broughton & Singer, which is devoted to James Broughton’s and Joel Singer’s personal and creative partnership. SONG OF THE GODBODY was featured in Jon Gartenberg’s program James Broughton, Cinema Poet, which screened at The Museum of Modern Art on July 6 and July 10, 1979.
Read MoreAfter THE PLEASURE GARDEN was honored at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival, James Broughton was offered a Hollywood movie deal, which he turned down. The artist instead took a 15-year hiatus from filmmaking altogether to focus on his poetry. Upon returning to the medium in 1967, the counterculture was America’s dominant culture, and Broughton’s cinematic comeback met this euphoric and liberating moment.
GME is pleased to present THE BED (1967), THE GOLDEN POSITIONS (1970), and TESTAMENT (1974) in a curated package devoted to the second act — spanning the rise and fall of the “hippie” era — in Broughton’s multifaceted career as a filmmaker.
Read MoreFrom 1948 to 1953, Broughton crafted a series of humorous, at times fantastical, and often playfully anti-authoritarian films imbibed with his poetic practice that earned him the reputation of “the father of West Coast experimental cinema.” GME is pleased to present three of those films — Broughton’s solo debut MOTHER’S DAY (1948), 1951’s FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, and the artist’s crowning achievement from this period, 1953’s THE PLEASURE GARDEN —in the curated package Early Films by James Broughton.
Read MoreRoger 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.
Read MoreRoger 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.
Read MoreGME 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreWHIPLASH 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.
Read MoreWarren 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.”
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 MoreIn 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.
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 MoreA 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.
Read MoreNOBLESSE 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.
Read MoreWarren 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.”
Read MoreWarren 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.”
Read MoreWarren 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 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 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 MoreIn THE TENTH LEGION, Sonbert presents his college age friends at work and play, wandering the streets of NYC, lounging, shopping, and posing for the camera. The film stylistically exemplifies Sonbert’s masterful use of a constantly moving hand-held camera as it trails the teenage protagonists in choreographed fashion, and of chiaroscuro lighting effects in interior scenes.
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