FRIENDLY WITNESS (US, 1989, Warren Sonbert)

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“Warren Sonbert was the supreme Romantic diarist of the cinema.” —Wheeler Winston Dixon

GME President 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.”

Sonbert’s choice to return to music fused the aural style of his late-1960s New York shorts with the polyvalent montage approach he had perfected throughout the 1970s and ‘80s in such silent works as CARRIAGE TRADE (1973), DIVIDED LOYALTIES (1978), and NOBLESSE OBLIGE (1981).

This artistic choice does not undercut the poetic and political dimensions of Sonbert’s filmmaking, however. The inclusion of Motown music and other ‘60s pop hits in FRIENDLY WITNESS, for example, functions as a nostalgic recall of Sonbert’s youth. (Motown and ‘60s pop can be heard throughout his early films, and footage from some of these films reappear alongside newer footage in FRIENDLY WITNESS).

As noted by critic Fred Camper: “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.”

STILL: WARREN SONBERT’S FRIENDLY WITNESS (1989). SOURCE: DUKE UNIVERSITY.

A 2023 program note by the Tate Modern reads: “Sonbert traveled extensively in his capacity as a professional music critic. FRIENDLY WITNESS marked his return, after 20 years of making films, to incorporating music tracks back into his work. In doing so, he selected specific recordings from his firsthand knowledge of a vast repertoire of classical, pop, and world music idioms… Sonbert accompanied the closing imagery with a music underscore from Gluck’s operatic overture to Iphigénie en Aulide. The filmmaker observed: ‘Spectacle, public domain, objective (God’s eye) point of view is the aesthetic approach with the constant idea that all this activity is perhaps occurring simultaneously.’ Here as Sonbert weaves together an extraordinary palette of synchronous activity worldwide, he places himself firmly in the pantheon of the great montage theorists in film history.”

STILL: WARREN SONBERT’S FRIENDLY WITNESS (1989). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

FRIENDLY WITNESS has experienced something of a renaissance among film scholars, Sonbert aficionados and the broader filmgoing public. Most recently, FRIENDLY WITNESS screened at New York University as part of Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) student Andrew Reichel’s program Three by Three by Three Hundred: Rare 16mm Films. Chicago’s Sweet Void Cinema also featured the film as part of the program Pop Music in Prismatic Utopia, curated by Joshua Minsoo Kim.

FRIENDLY WITNESS is part of the DSL collection THE WARREN SONBERT COLLECTION and is included within the curated package WARREN SONBERT: MUSIC & MONTAGE. This digital version of FRIENDLY WITNESS is a 2K transfer from 16mm materials.

FRIENDLY WITNESS
(US, 1989)

Director: Warren Sonbert

  • 22 minutes
  • 16mm
  • Color and B&W
  • Sound
Distribution Format/s: DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

Published By: GME

Classroom Price: $500

Institutional Price: Inquire

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