Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from March related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. A number of films by filmmakers that GME distributes screened at various venues in New York City and internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, Metrograph, Light Industry, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. GME also announced a number of new titles for DSL and/or DVD distribution, including Abigail Child’s prismatic triptych THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY and Paula Gaitán’s experimental documentary DAYS IN SINTRA.

March 8th — GME

On March 8th, in recognition of Women's History Month, GME paid tribute to women filmmakers whose work we distribute in our catalogue of digital moving image publications in DSL, DVD, and/or Blu-Ray format. As the role of women filmmakers has been generally overlooked in the writing of film histories, GME has carefully curated a selection of works so as to more fully represent the significant contributions that women filmmakers have made from the birth of moving pictures.

GME’s collection provides a unique opportunity to revisit and revise the history of the moving image so as to incorporate these works in more robust fashion into the academic and cultural canon. To learn more about the myriad films by women filmmakers that we distribute in our collection, click here. To inquire about purchasing one or more of these titles for institutional use, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

March 8th — MoMA

On March 8th, The Museum of Modern Art hosted the North American premiere of James Benning’s latest experimental documentary, EIGHT BRIDGES (2026), as part of their annual Doc Fortnight festival. Benning’s film concludes an unofficial trilogy that began with his previous features TEN SKIES and 13 LAKES.

Benning remains one of our most significant, formalist avant-garde filmmakers, and GME is proud to be the sole distributor of his films to the North American university market. Currently available from GME as both DVDs and DVD/DSL bundles are Benning’s films 11 X 14, ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE, 27 YEARS LATER (1977-2012), GRAND OPERA (1979), AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST & FOUND) (1984), O PANAMA (1985), LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (1986), DESERET (1995), FOUR CORNERS (1997), his CALIFORNIA TRILOGY (1999-2001), CASTING A GLANCE (2007), RR (2007), NATURAL HISTORY (2009), and RUHR (2014). More details about these individual offerings are available here.

March 13th — GME

On March 13th, GME announced our distribution of Abigail Child's THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY, a prismatic triptych comprised of the films CAKE AND STEAK (2004), THE FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU (2004), and SURF AND TURF (2008—11).

This trilogy is now available to academic and cultural institutions worldwide as a Digital Site License. To inquire about renting or purchasing THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

To read GME President Jon Gartenberg’s full program note for THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY, click here.

DVD COVER OF *LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM.*

March 13th — Metrograph

Beginning on March 13th, Metrograph paid tribute the prolific Soviet filmmaker Boris Barnet with the series BORIS BARNET: A SOVIET POET, which showcased 12 of the directors films spanning the silent era through to his final film, 1963’s WHISTLE STOP. The series coincided with the translation and publication of a selection of Barnet’s never-before-read letters.

GME distributes to North American universities Barnet’s 1927 collaboration with Fedor Ozep, the adventure serial MISS MEND, on a DVD published by Flicker Alley. GME also distributes Barnet’s THE HOUSE ON TRUBNAYA SQUARE (1928) in the Flicker Alley DVD collection LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM. This collection also features Lev Kuleshov’s 1924 film THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF MR. WEST IN THE LAND OF THE BOLSHEVIKS, which features Barnet in its cast.

OFFICIAL POSTER FOR VIVIAN OSTROVSKY’S FILM *ELIZABETH BISHOP: FROM BRAZIL WITH LOVE.*

March 18th — Amphitheater at Lincoln Center

On Wednesday, March 18th, at 6pm, Vivian Ostrovsky screened her new film ELIZABETH BISHOP: From Brazil with Love at the Amphitheater at Lincoln Center. Ostrovsky is a longtime friend and colleague of Jon Gartenberg’s, and a collection of her found footage films, titled PLUNGE, is currently available to North American universities from GME as a DVD or DSL. Gartenberg also recently contributed an original essay for Ostrovsky’s 2025 career retrospective, But Elsewhere Is Always Better, in Berlin. The essay (which can be read here) analyzed Ostrovsky’s filmmaking methodology alongside that of Warren Sonbert’s.

March 19th — GME

On the occasion of Women's History Month, GME celebrated the groundbreaking work of arguably the most important avant-garde filmmaker of all time: Maya Deren. Her major films are currently available from GME for acquisition by North American academic institutions. To purchase one or more of these titles for institutional use, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

Deren's dreamlike first film, 1943's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON, is perhaps the most important avant-garde film in history. It is featured in the Re:Voir Video DVD collection MAYA DEREN: EXPERIMENTAL FILMS, which GME distributes to colleges and universities in North America. In addition to her renowned debut, the collection features two additional dreamlike shorts that Deren made during this fruitful early period in her career: AT LAND (1944) and RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1945). Additionally, the collection MAYA DEREN: DANCE FILMS, which GME also distributes, traces Deren's creative journey into the realms of dance and ritualism, beginning with A RITUAL IN TRANSFIGURED TIME (1945), through A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR CAMERA (1945), MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE (1948), and culminating in her final film, THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT (1959).

DVD COVER FOR ERNST SCHMIDT JR.’S *VIENNAFILM 1896—1976*.

March 20th — International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

From the beginning of the month through March 20th, ahead of the 72nd edition of their annual festival, the International Short Film Festival of Oberhausen showcased films by Ernst Schmidt Jr. on their streaming channel, in a slate titled By Schmidt, for beginners and advanced learners. A prolific creator of expanded cinema pieces, conceptual films, and Lettrist text films, Schmidt also directed the two-hour documentary VIENNAFILM 1896—1976, which he described as “a kind of anthology about Vienna, from the discovery of film up until the present time.” GME distributes this documentry to North American academic institutions as a DVD and DSL/DVD bundle published by Index Edition. To purchase this title, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

March 20th — GME

On the occasion of Women’s History Month, GME was pleased to present, in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, four short films by pioneering women filmmakers that foreground the human body, particularly within the context of dance and movement.

A legendary exhibition curator at MoMA, Adrienne Mancia spent her career championing the work of such female cineastes as Shirley Clarke, Agnès Varda, and Maya Deren. Deren’s late-1950s presentation of her magnum opus MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943) proving a particularly formative experience for Mancia. Therefore, we offered Deren’s final work, the dreamlike dance film THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT (1959), alongside rare behind-the-scenes footage of Deren shooting the film, as seen in an excerpt from Martina Kudláček's 2001 documentary IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN. We were also pleased to present INTROSPECTION (1941), the debut film of a long-overlooked contemporary of Deren’s, Sara Kathryn-Arledge. Finally, we offered Stella Simon’s vanguard 1927 short HANDE, made in collaboration with Miklos Bandy.

March 20th — MoMA

From March 20th to 26th, The Museum of Modern Art screened Thierry Frémaux’s 2025 documentary Lumière, Le Cinéma!, which chronicles the pioneering achievements of the French filmmaking entrepreneurs Auguste and Louis Lumière in the late 19th century.

GME distributes, to North American universities, five groundbreaking hand-painted films by the Lumière brothers in the Flicker Alley DVD collection DISCOVERING CINEMA. GME also distributes a number of early Lumière cinematic experiments in the Flicker Alley DVD collection SAVED FROM THE FLAMES, which presents a compendium of 54 rare and restored short films from the inflammable years of cinema, when movies were made on nitrate film stock and therefore susceptible to fire and decay.

To purchase one or more of these titles, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

DVD COVER FOR *GUNVOR NELSON: LIGHT YEARS.*

March 22nd — GME

Beginning on March 22nd, the Academy Museum, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Film Forum, Rotations LA, and UCLA Film & Television Archive, paid tribute to the late Gunvor Nelson with three film programs. A pioneering experimental filmmaker active since the early 1960s, Nelson taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and made films for over 50 years. Her 1966 collaboration with Dorothy Wiley, SCHMEERGUNTZ, captured (in the words of Lynne Sachs) the “raw, messy ecstasy of being a mother,” while her best-known work, MY NAME IS OONA (1969), is a rhythmically-structured film featuring footage of her daughter Oona reciting her name and days of the week. (Sachs, a friend and colleague of GME’s, provided a video introduction for the second Nelson tribute screening).

GME distributes SCHMEERGUNTZ and MY NAME IS OONA in the Re:Voir Video collection DEPARTURES, which also features Nelson’s films TAKE OFF (1962) and MOONS POOL (1973). This collection is available to the North American university market as a DVD and downloadable DSL files. Furthermore, GME distributes Nelson’s films FOG PUMAS (1967), FRAME LINE (1983—2014), LIGHT YEARS (1987), and BEFORE NEED REDRESSED (1994) in the Re:Voir collection LIGHT YEARS, which is also available on both DVD and DSL formats. The DVD publication of LIGHT YEARS is accompanied by a 124-page booklet comprised of critical essays and an interview with Nelson by Julie Savelli, lecturer in film studies at the University of Montpellier 3.

To purchase one or more of these titles, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

March 25th — GME

GME mourns the loss of the great Alexander Kluge, who passed away on March 25th, 2026, at the age of 94. Kluge’s career as a filmmaker began in the 1960s, and he played a pivotal role in the emergence of the New German Cinema movement. In 1962, Kluge was one of the filmmakers who signed the Oberhausen Manifesto, which called for a new kind of German cinema that challenged traditional storytelling and addressed contemporary social issues.

GME distributes to North American universities Kluge’s features YESTERDAY’S GIRL (1966) and PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973) on a DVD publication with Edition Filmmuseum that includes five of the German artist’s short films as bonus features: BRUTALITY IN STONE (1961), TEACHERS (1963), AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE, AN VERTOV (both 1998), and SAM REMEMBERS PAPA KONG (2006). Kluge’s participation in the Oberhausen Manifesto is also represented in our library, with his 1961 film BRUTALITÄT IN STEIN (a collaboration with filmmaker Peter Schamoni) included in the 2-disc DVD publication THE OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO. To purchase one or more of these titles, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

March 26th — GME

In 2008, Jon Gartenberg programmed Paula Gaitán’s experimental documentary DAYS IN SINTRA at the Tribeca Film Festival. 18 years later, Gartenberg Media was pleased to announce our distribution of Gaitán’s landmark film as a Digital Site License to academic and cultural institutions in the United States.

As noted by Gartenberg, “Filmmaker Paula Gaitán was married to Glauber Rocha, a key figure in the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement, which embodied politically engaged filmmaking that resisted colonialism in Latin America… In DAYS IN SINTRA, Gaitán creates a deeply moving meditation on memory and time as she chronicles her return from Brazil to Sintra, Portugal, where she lived in exile with her husband and their children before his untimely death. In the form of an experimental narrative, she deftly interweaves Super 8 home movie footage and photographs taken of Rocha in 1981 with beautifully composed, evocative contemporary images of the Portuguese landscape.”

To rent or purchase this title, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

FILMMAKER AND GME ASSOCIATE MATT McKINZIE.

March 27th — Ann Arbor Film Festival

On March 27th, GME associate Matt McKinzie attended the 64th Ann Arbor Film Festival, where his experimental short film EMBRYONIC JOURNEY screened in-competition in the shorts programming block “Devotional Signals.” For several years in the late 1970s, Jon Gartenberg represented MoMA at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and brought back numerous programs of avant-garde films for the Museum's Cineprobe series.

Pictured at left is McKinzie’s signed Polaroid portrait, taken in front of the AAFF cloth by festival staff in the lobby of the historic Michigan Theater.

DVD COVER OF JOHN COOK’S *SLOW SUMMER / CLINCH*.

March 31st — Light Industry

On Tuesday, March 31st, at 7pm, Light Industry presented John Cook’s documentary debut I JUST CAN’T GO ON (1972). GME distributes Cook’s narrative features SLOW SUMMER (1976, co-directed by Susanne Schett) and CLINCH (1978) as a DVD and DSL/DVD bundle published by Edition Filmmuseum. This publication includes I JUST CAN’T GO ON as a bonus feature.

To purchase this title, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.

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