Experimental Film: From 16mm to 2K
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JON GARTENBERG AND DAVID DEITCH, AS THEY APPEAR IN THE NEW 2K TRANSFER OF WARREN SONBERT’S HONOR AND OBEY (1988).
This fall, GME is pleased to welcome into our DSL distribution library new 2K digital restorations of Warren Sonbert's polyvalent montage films, as well as new digital transfers of select films by James Broughton and Joel Singer.
Sonbert's films will be available for rental or purchase to academic and cultural institutions worldwide, both individually and across three curated packages: Sonbert in the Seventies, Sonbert in the Eighties, and Warren Sonbert: Music & Montage. Broughton and Singer's films will also be available individually and across three curated packages on an institutional, worldwide basis: Early Films by James Broughton, James Broughton: The Second Act, and Broughton & Singer.
LEFT: WARREN SONBERT. RIGHT: JAMES BROUGHTON AND JOEL SINGER.
Since Sonbert's passing in 1995, GME has been the custodian of the artist's oeuvre and legacy. In the 1970s, while working as a curator in MoMA's Department of Film, Gartenberg acquired Sonbert's films on 16mm celluloid for the Museum's permanent collection. Beginning in the 1990s, Gartenberg preserved Sonbert's films on 16mm while working as the Program Director for the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS. He has since published two volumes of writing about Sonbert's life and career in collaboration with Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, and in 2024, GME spearheaded the 2K digitizations of Sonbert's films.
Gartenberg also acquired a selection of films by Broughton and Singer on 16mm for the Archives of MoMA's Film Department in the 1970s. He programmed those films for a July 1979 exhibition at the Museum, titled James Broughton, Cinema Poet.
GME's acquisition of films by Sonbert, Broughton, and Singer represent the final additions to the company's distribution library, thereby denoting a full-circle moment for Gartenberg's career as an archivist, curator, and lifelong champion of avant-garde cinema.
Please feel free to contact us about acquiring DSL versions of any of the existing titles in our DVD/Blu-ray catalog.