THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 2

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THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 2

“Jay Rosenblatt makes short, pointed, poetic films, and to see a collection of his work is to know he's a major artist. His specialness has no single source. He's a master at matching music and image, and the nature of his work, which usually involves discovering and using found footage, requires profound patience. Yet mostly, I suspect, what makes almost every Jay Rosenblatt film a full emotional experience is his empathy, his deep, unfeigned and unmistakable respect for life in its many forms.” - Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle.

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SWISS TOUR (SWITZERLAND/US, 1949, Leopold Lindtberg)

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SWISS TOUR (SWITZERLAND/US, 1949, Leopold Lindtberg)

American soldiers stationed in Europe in the aftermath of WWII are on leave in Switzerland. Among them is marine Stanley Robin (Cornel Wilde) who loses his heart to a watch seller Suzane (Josette Day). In the glamorous nightlife of Zermatt, however, seductive Yvonne (Simone Signoret) puts their young love to the test. But Stanley, a lovelorn soldier, moves heaven and earth to win back Suzanne by entering a ski race at the foot of the Matterhorn. There is little time left to consummate the delicate bonds of transnational love.

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Austrian Avant-Garde Film and Video

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Austrian Avant-Garde Film and Video

GME presents key works published by INDEX Edition from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Dieter Brehm, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.

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NATIVE NEW YORKER (US, 2005, Steve Bilich)

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NATIVE NEW YORKER (US, 2005, Steve Bilich)

Filmed with a 1924 hand-crank Cine-Kodak camera, Shaman Trail Scout 'Coyote' takes a journey which transcends time, from Inwood Park (where the island was traded for beads and booze), down a native trail (now 'Broadway'), into lower Manhattan (sacred burial ground, now including the newest natives of this island empire). Shot before, during and after 9/11, 'Native New Yorker' took several years of filming, with a running length of 13 minutes. Original score composed by William Susman.

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AMPHETAMINE (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel)

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AMPHETAMINE (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel)

“Sonbert began making films in 1966, as a student at New York University's film school in New York. In his first films, he uniquely captured the spirit of his generation, and was inspired both by his university milieu and by the denizens of the Warhol art scene. In both provocative and playful fashion, AMPHETAMINE depicts young men shooting amphetamines and making love in the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll.” - Jon Gartenberg

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WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

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WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? is an homage to the artistic and social milieu of New York City in the 1960s, as portrayed by the youthful protagonists in the film. Sonbert chronicles his friends and colleagues at the Janis and Castelli galleries, MOMA, Warhol’s Factory, the Bleecker Street Cinema, a rock concert, shopping, dancing, partying, and simply hanging out.

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HALL OF MIRRORS (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

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HALL OF MIRRORS (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

“This film is an outgrowth of one of Sonbert's film classes at NYU, in which he was given outtakes from a Hollywood film photographed by Hal Mohr to re-edit into a narrative sequence. Adding to this found footage, Sonbert filmed Warhol's superstars Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga in more private and reflective moments.” - Jon Gartenberg

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The Projection Beam to the Digital Stream, From the Museum to the Internet

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The Projection Beam to the Digital Stream, From the Museum to the Internet

Former, long-time curators in video and film at the Museum of Modern Art, Barbara London and GME President Jon Gartenberg discuss their journeys from the 1970s aspects of institutionalized media collection and exhibition, festival programming and the long road of transitions in media formats.

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Edition Filmmuseum

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Edition Filmmuseum

GME presents key landmark silent, documentary and experimental works published by Edition Filmmuseum – Vienna, including films by James Benning, Martina Kudláček, and Josef von Sternberg (US), Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov (USSR), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), and others.

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Spanish and Latin American Avant-Garde Film and Animation

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Spanish and Latin American Avant-Garde Film and Animation

GME presents key film and video work published by Cameo Media & Filmoteca de Catalunya covering experimental, avant-garde, animation, documentary and historical films from Spain and Latin America, including films by Val del Omar, Segundo de Chomón, and others who have made their mark in this area.

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GUNS (US, 1967, Robert Kramer)

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GUNS (US, 1967, Robert Kramer)

Following a series of films questioning commitment and politics in America and culminating with MILESTONES 1975, and a 1977 documentary on Lisbon’s Carnation Revolution, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN PORTUGAL, Robert Kramer moved to France with his family. The first film he made there was GUNS, an intricate feature which echoed the paranoid films of 1970’s Hollywood. With GUNS, Kramer continues his exploration of the militant psyche, while at the same time experimenting with different forms of narration.

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MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (Belgium, 1978, Boris Lehman)

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MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (Belgium, 1978, Boris Lehman)

¨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

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HOTEL NEW YORK / NEW YORK STORY (US, 1984/1980, Jackie Raynal )

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HOTEL NEW YORK / NEW YORK STORY (US, 1984/1980, Jackie Raynal )

“HOTEL NEW YORK can be seen as a description of a fight; the fight of an immigrant with her new city and the fight of a filmmaker with her desire to make films within precarious boundaries. In Hotel New York Jackie Raynal plays and wins.”

-Cahiers du Cinéma

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IN THE COUNTRY (US, 1966, Robert Kramer)

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IN THE COUNTRY (US, 1966, Robert Kramer)

In the United States in 1966, Robert Kramer directed his first feature film, IN THE COUNTRY, outside all existing production systems and with the political fellow travelers who had just filmed him in the documentary TROUBLEMAKERS. IN THE COUNTRY shows what is left out of TROUBLEMAKERS: the documentary shows actions (community organizing, militant activism) that the fictional film keeps outside the frame in order to focus on a relationship crisis in which the man fails to put aside, for a few days, his obsessive political activism.

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THE EDGE / ICE (US, 1967/1969, Robert Kramer)

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THE EDGE / ICE (US, 1967/1969, Robert Kramer)

THE EDGE (1967) and ICE (1969) form a definitive diptych on the temptations of terrorism and insurrection: a man wants to assassinate the President of the United States (THE EDGE); revolutionary groups launch a major armed offensive against the ruling regime (ICE). However, both fictions are less interested in the impact of activism than in the moral state of shock that gradually shifts relationships and beliefs as it overlays another sense of time and other types of logic on those of revolutionary efficiency. Made in parallel with Robert Kramer’s own militant activism in Newsreel and other organizations of the American left, which they contradict dialectically, they are an extraordinary application of filmmaking considered as a tool of thought in motion.

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3 JOURNEYS TO LITHUANIA (Jonas Mekas, Adlolfas Mekas, Pola Chapelle)

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3 JOURNEYS TO LITHUANIA (Jonas Mekas, Adlolfas Mekas, Pola Chapelle)

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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