Two films by Warren Sonbert — Where Did Our Love Go? and Amphetamine (both 1966) — screen in Pride Month programs at the Morgan Library and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, respectively, on June 11th and 15th.

"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." —Jon Gartenberg

Tonight, June 11th, Warren Sonbert's second film Where Did Our Love Go? (1966) screens on a loop at the Morgan Library from 6-9pm as part of their celebration Morgan After Hours: Pride. As described in the Library's program note, Where Did Our Love Go? sees Sonbert "chronicle his community at work and play in the Janis and Castelli galleries, Warhol’s Factory, the Bleecker Street Cinema, and other iconic spaces for the artistic and social milieu of New York City in the 1960s." In addition to Sonbert's film, Morgan After Hours: Pride will consist of dancing, drinks, live DJ sets, and artwork set against the Library's Gilded Age glamour.

Four days later, on June 15th, Sonbert's debut film Amphetamine (1966) screens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the program Out of the Closet and Into the Co-op: Early Queer Cinema at The Film-Makers' Cooperative, curated by Matt McKinzie (GME associate and Artistic Director of the Coop) in collaboration with BAM guest curator Conor Williams.

Amphetamine depicts a group of preppy, young gay men lounging, kissing, and taking intravenous drugs in an enclosed space, underscored by the lush music of the Supremes' album Where Did Our Love Go? (hence the title of Sonbert's follow-up film). A transgressive pre-Stonewall document of queer intimacy, euphoria, and community-building, Amphetamine's centerpiece is a breathtaking 360-degree shot of two men embracing and passionately kissing — a visual homage to the 360-degree shot of James Stewart and Kim Novak embracing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

GME recently spearheaded new digital restorations of Sonbert's early films, including Amphetamine and Where Did Our Love Go?, which premiered at Metrograph in June 2025 in collaboration with The Film-Makers' Cooperative. Sonbert first distributed his films on 16mm at the Coop beginning in the 1960s, and had his first career retrospective in 1968, at the age of 20, at The Film-Makers' Cinematheque. The program at BAM celebrates the Coop's legacy as an early safe haven for queer experimental cinema in the 1960s and early '70s, and features Sonbert's debut alongside films by Jack Smith, Barbara Hammer, Jean Genet, Edward Owens, José Rodríguez Soltero, Nikolai Ursin, and Marguerite Paris.

The Estate of Warren Sonbert has previously named GME as the custodian of the artist's legacy. Since Sonbert’s untimely passing in 1995, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute and curate career retrospectives of his films on an international basis, as well as publish original documents from the paper archive of his writings, which are now housed at Harvard University and reprinted in a special 2014 issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. A second issue of Framework, consisting of contemporaneous writings about Sonbert’s early films, was published in 2024. Jon Gartenberg was Guest Editor for both Framework issues.

New digital transfers of Sonbert's early films are currently available from GME for purchase by academic and cultural institutions worldwide. These titles are also available for rental from The Film-Makers' Cooperative.

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Celebrate Pride with Two Warren Sonbert Films Screening in NYC This Month!