Gartenberg Media is actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD, Blu-ray and DSL editions of films and video art, that we then make available exclusively to universities in the United States and Canada. They encompass important works from the breadth of the history of the moving image, and range from pioneers of silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.

GME has also endeavored to provide in-depth academic study of extensive works by key directors in the history of the medium via multi-volume digital editions of their work. From the silent era, GME features the turn-of-the-century trick films of Georges Méliès and from the mid-1910’s, the Keystone, Essanay, and Mutual comedies of Charlie Chaplin. Films from the late teens to the apotheosis of the silent era are featured in the works of Carl Th. Dreyer (Denmark), Marcel L’Herbier (France), and Dziga Vertov (the Soviet Union).

From women directors, we present the experimental and dance films by Maya Deren from the 1940’s and 1950’s, the French and U.S. films of editor and director Jackie Raynal from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, and the performative comedies of Marie Losier, all made in the 21st Century.

We offer from France the Zanzibar films (1960’s – 1970’s) of prolific director Philippe Garrel, as well as from Austria, the Actionist and Structural films of Kurt Kren (1950’s – 1990’s, see 31/75 ASYLUM from 1975, now streaming for free for a limited time), and the multi-layered found footage experiments of Peter Tscherkassky (1982 - 2015).

We also distribute in-depth the work of filmmakers worthy of rediscovery: the poetic documentaries of Henri Storck (Belgium, 1930’s – 1940’s), the political narratives of Robert Kramer (U.S., 1967-1969) and the oeuvre of Marcel Hanoun (France), who lived at the margins of modernist cinema (UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE [1959], OCTOBRE À MADRID [1964], and LES SAISONS [1968-1972]).

From the United States, we present comprehensive digital editions from three of the most significant avant-garde filmmakers of the postwar era: Jonas Mekas, Warren Sonbert, and James Benning. We offer two dozen diary films shot and assembled by Jonas Mekas over half a century (from 1949 through 2002); they document the creative lives of artists and friends, expressed primarily through a staccato, fragmented montage technique, and frequently accompanied on the soundtrack by the filmmaker’s meditation on the themes of exile and assimilation, as well as of the passage of time and remembrance. From Warren Sonbert, we are pleased to present 5 newly-created digital editions of his proto-narrative films from 1966 and 1967, in which the filmmaker’s camera eye interacts with his youthful protagonists and Warhol Superstars. From artist James Benning GME provides 16 landscape films over a period of nearly 40 years, from 1977 through 2014.

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In addition to GME’s Featured Filmmakers Collection, other highlighted collections designed around thematic teaching and programming concepts, such as City Symphony Films, Found Footage Films, Women Directors, Films on World War I and its Aftermath, II Cinema Ritrovato Award-Winning Films, can be found here.

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Introducing GME's Featured Filmmakers Collection