April 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

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April 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from April related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, films by Warren Sonbert screened at Anthology Film Archives and Doc Films at the University of Chicago, while a program of city symphony films co-curated by GME President Jon Gartenberg screened at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. GME also presented the readymade exhibition Jack Mitchell: Artists, in honor of Mitchell’s centennial, and announced the publication of Volume 64, No. 2, of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, which is comprised of contemporaneous writings, stills, and ephemera related to Sonbert’s early films, combined with Gartenberg’s original writing.

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GME Licensed Stills from Warren Sonbert's AMPHETAMINE for Dr. Maurice Nagington's book THE MORAL LESSONS OF CHEMSEX: A CRITICAL APPROACH

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GME Licensed Stills from Warren Sonbert's AMPHETAMINE for Dr. Maurice Nagington's book THE MORAL LESSONS OF CHEMSEX: A CRITICAL APPROACH

Dr. Maurice Nagington’s book The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach was published by Routledge on December 23, 2024, and is now available to own in print and digital editions. Two stills from Warren Sonbert’s debut film AMPHETAMINE (1966) were licensed by GME to appear in the pages of Nagington’s book. Those stills, which depict young gay men using intravenous drugs, are well-suited for Nagington’s book, which “explores how gay and bi men’s lived experiences of chemsex intersect with its cultural representations.”

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: A King Double Bill

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: A King Double Bill

During her time as a curator in MoMA's Department of Film, Adrienne Mancia was a major proponent of unearthing important and often overlooked treasures from film history. As noted by her close friend and colleague Jon Gartenberg, “[Adrienne] celebrated American directors of a bygone era who had worked within the Hollywood studio system.” King Vidor's THE JACK-KNIFE MAN (1920) and Henry King's THE SEVENTH DAY (1922) are among the early Hollywood films Mancia championed. Both films, which were featured in MoMA's 2023 In Memoriam tribute to Mancia, stream this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room.

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FRAMEWORK, Volume 64, No. 2: The Early Films of Warren Sonbert (1966-1973)

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FRAMEWORK, Volume 64, No. 2: The Early Films of Warren Sonbert (1966-1973)

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to announce the publication of Volume 64, No. 2, of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, which is devoted to writings about the early films of Warren Sonbert. Jon Gartenberg was named the custodian of Sonbert’s legacy, and since Sonbert's passing, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute, and curate career retrospectives of his work on an international basis. Furthermore, GME has facilitated the publication of original documents from his paper archive, which is now housed at Harvard University. This journal is Framework’s second issue devoted to Sonbert’s life and career. Volume 56, No. 1, published in Spring 2015, focused on Sonbert’s own writings. Gartenberg served as Guest Editor on both Framework issues.

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Warren Sonbert's CARRIAGE TRADE Screened This Month at Anthology Film Archives

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Warren Sonbert's CARRIAGE TRADE Screened This Month at Anthology Film Archives

On Saturday, April 12th, at 7:30pm, Warren Sonbert’s CARRIAGE TRADE screened at Anthology Film Archives as part of their Essential Cinema series, “a special series of films screened on a repertory basis… assembled in 1970—75 by Anthology’s Film Selection Committee — James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, P. Adams Sitney, and Jonas Mekas.” Jon Gartenberg was named the custodian of Sonbert’s legacy, and since Sonbert's passing, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute, and curate career retrospectives of his work on an international basis.

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NYPL Presents the City Symphony Program IN THE STREETS on April 17th, curated by Jon Gartenberg with Elena Rossi-Snook

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NYPL Presents the City Symphony Program IN THE STREETS on April 17th, curated by Jon Gartenberg with Elena Rossi-Snook

On Thursday, April 17th, at 5:30pm, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will present the program In The Streets in the Bruno Walter Auditorium. Curated by GME President Jon Gartenberg with Elena Rossi-Snook, NYPL’s Reserve Film and Video Collection Specialist. this screening will explore the spirit and structure of the “city symphony” film.

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Three Warren Sonbert Films Screened at Doc Films at University of Chicago

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Three Warren Sonbert Films Screened at Doc Films at University of Chicago

On Sunday, April 13th, at 7pm, three films by Warren Sonbert — 1966’s HALL OF MIRRORS, 1986’s THE CUP AND THE LIP, and 1989’s FRIENDLY WITNESS — screened at Doc Films at the University of Chicago on 16mm. This program was introduced by film scholar Fred Camper, who has written extensively about Sonbert’s films, and screened as part of a larger Doc Films series curated by Hannah Yang, titled Encounters in the Cinema. Yang describes the series as “draw[ing] attention to… the way in which both film and spectator shape each other, and cinema as a whole, in the dark space of the movie theater.”

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The Sonbert Renaissance

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The Sonbert Renaissance

In recent years, the work of filmmaker Warren Sonbert has experienced a renaissance among film critics, scholars, cinephiles, and the general public. Sonbert’s films have proven especially popular with younger audiences around the globe who are discovering his work for the first time.

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March 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

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March 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from March related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, GME celebrated Women’s History Month by spotlighting works by women filmmakers that we distribute on DSL, DVD, and Blu-Ray. In the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, GME streamed Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES (which Mancia wrote about at length in Film Comment) and featured a number of rare archival treasures from Mancia's papers. Additionally, MIX NYC publicly shared the filmed Q&A session from their festival's closing night program in November 2024, which featured remarks from GME President Jon Gartenberg, commenting on GME associate Matt McKinzie's film and the other films in the program. At the end of the month, Gartenberg contributed program notes for Abigail Child's screening of her film THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY at the Film-Makers' Cooperative.

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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

On November 23rd, 2024, QUEER DREAM TRIPTYCH, a found footage poem film by GME associate Matt McKinzie, screened at the Quad Cinema in the closing night program of MIX: The New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. The post-screening Q&A session with the filmmakers involved rich, cross-generational discourse pertaining to depictions of pleasure versus depictions of trauma, as related to queer identity and sexuality, in the selected films. This Q&A session was filmed and made available to the public on March 21st. GME President Jon Gartenberg, in attendance that evening with GME Fine Arts Curator David Deitch, commended the filmmakers for “externalizing their interior struggles on the screen,” praising their willingness to be “vulnerable” in their work and remarking that he found this kind of filmmaking — wherein the artists confronted their trauma in their art — to be “new and refreshing.”

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