Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY

Jim McBride’s DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (1967), which streams this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, is widely regarded as one of the first “mockumentaries,” and was once described by eminent film critic Richard Brody as an “ingenious, scruffy metafiction… an exotic fruit grown in New York from the seed of the French New Wave.” Filmed on a shoestring budget over the course of several days, it is a work of experimental fiction presented as an autobiographical documentary about aspiring filmmaker David Holzman (played by L.M. Kit Carson), who decides to make a filmed diary of his life on the Upper West Side.

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Reflecting on "Love and Joy, Warren Sonbert"

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Reflecting on "Love and Joy, Warren Sonbert"

On Sunday, June 8th, Gartenberg Media Enterprises publicly presented the World Premiere digital restorations of a selection of the early films of Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) at Metrograph in New York City: Where Did Our Love Go?, Amphetamine, Hall of Mirrors (all 1966) and Carriage Trade (1973), as well as Jeff Scher’s Postcards from Warren (1998) and Warren (1991). We were delighted to welcome colleagues, friends, and family of Sonbert, GME, and the Film-Makers' Cooperative to this special event, which also launched the return of Sonbert's films to distribution at the Coop in digital format. All of these digital restorations were created with the intent of making Sonbert's films more accessible to a wide audience.

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Love and Joy, Warren Sonbert

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Love and Joy, Warren Sonbert

On Sunday, June 8th, at 2:15pm, Gartenberg Media Enterprises and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative will premiere new digital restorations of Warren Sonbert’s AMPHETAMINE, WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?, HALL OF MIRRORS, and CARRIAGE TRADE at Metrograph. This World Premiere screening also celebrates the return of these early films of Warren Sonbert to the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative, from where they were originally distributed to be shown at the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque and elsewhere. The post-screening panel will be moderated by curator and archivist Jon Gartenberg and include the FMC’s Artist Liaison, Matt McKinzie, and Sonbert’s longtime friends, Emmy Award-winning animator and NYU professor Jeff Scher and fashion designer Barbara Hodes.

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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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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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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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Read Jon Gartenberg's Program Note for Abigail Child's THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY

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Read Jon Gartenberg's Program Note for Abigail Child's THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY

On Friday, March 28th, filmmaker and poet Abigail Child presented her feature-length cinematic triptych THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, of which she is a longtime member. THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY is comprised of three films Child created over the span of a decade: CAKE AND STEAK (2004), THE FUTURE IS BEHIND YOU (2004), and SURF AND TURF (2008—11). Child describes the trilogy as “prismatic” and being “about girlhood and the immigrant dream, focusing on post-WWII North American suburbs and… the war in Europe, critically seen through the lens of gender, property and myths of nation.” GME President Jon Gartenberg is a longtime friend and collaborator of Child’s and has programmed her work at film festivals internationally, including THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY, which was screened at the Pesaro Film Festival. Gartenberg contributed the program note for this screening at the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, which can be read here.

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Plus Experimental Shorts by Donald Richie and Rare Archival Treasures

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Plus Experimental Shorts by Donald Richie and Rare Archival Treasures

In addition to her work as a film programmer, Adrienne Mancia was an accomplished writer of film criticism and film treatments. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 avant-garde psychological thriller WOMAN IN THE DUNES was a film Mancia championed at length in Film Comment, and is one of the titles GME’s team has selected to stream this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room.

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

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

Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from January, in New York City and beyond, related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. In the first half of the month, a number of films that GME distributes to universities in North America were programmed at Anthology Film Archives. In the latter half of the month, GME highlighted the work of photographers Raimondo Borea, Hugh Bell, and Jack Mitchell. Specifically, Borea and Bell’s oeuvres were highlighted with the release of GME's New Photo Licensing Reel, and Mitchell’s 1963 portraits of dancer Maria Tallchief were revisited ahead of the New York City Ballet’s celebration of Tallchief’s centennial. Additionally, Mitchell’s 1994 images of Paul Taylor dancing with Mikhail Baryshnikov were presented in a new video, in recognition of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s 2025 Dance Symposium celebrating Baryshnikov and his legacy.

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