AMPHETAMINE Ascending: Warren Sonbert's Groundbreaking Debut Finds New Life on Digital Platforms and in Academia

AMPHETAMINE Ascending: Warren Sonbert's Groundbreaking Debut Finds New Life on Digital Platforms and in Academia

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to announce the release of a new digital restoration of Warren Sonbert’s groundbreaking debut film AMPHETAMINE (1966), which is currently available for institutional sale and clip licensing through GME. The film is also available for rental on a digital format through The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, where Sonbert originally distributed his early films on 16mm. This digital restoration of AMPHETAMINE, which theatrically premiered at Metrograph in New York City on June 8th, 2025, follows a period of renewed scholarly interest in Sonbert’s debut film. Namely, Dr. Maurice Nagington’s 2025 publication The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach (Routledge), Juan Suarez’s 2024 book Experimental Film and Queer Materiality (Oxford University Press), and GME associate Matt McKinzie's 2024 film program The Motown Sound and the Queer Underground (presented by Spectacle Theater and The Film-Makers' Cooperative), invoke AMPHETAMINE as a key filmic text integral to discourse surrounding 1960s avant-garde cinema, queer representation on film, popular music, chemsex, and connection.

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Celebrate Short Film Day with GME's Program of Holiday Shorts in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room

Celebrate Short Film Day with GME's Program of Holiday Shorts in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room

Today, December 21st, is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and has therefore been declared Short Film Day in Germany. December 28th is also recognized as Short Film Day in the United States, in honor of the Lumière brothers’ first public screening of moving pictures (all of which were shorts) at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28th, 1895. Celebrate Short Film Day this year by visiting the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, where a program of holiday-themed shorts, curated by the GME team, is now available to view.

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GME Launches The Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room with a Program of Holiday Shorts

GME Launches The Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room with a Program of Holiday Shorts

Today, Gartenberg Media Enterprises is honored to launch TheAdrienne Mancia Streaming Room. Here, you can stream films, clips, and other audiovisual ephemera related to the professional career of legendary film programmer and curator Adrienne Mancia. Mancia, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 95, was a friend and colleague of GME’s. She worked closely with Jon Gartenberg in the film department at the Museum of Modern Art during the 1970s and ‘80s, where she redefined the field of film programming. As the holiday season approaches, GME’s launch of the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room comprises an international array of short films, a format that Adrienne championed throughout her career. The movies streamed here are primarily in the experimental vein, and thus are lesser-known movies in the canon of holiday films. This selection incorporates abstract and hand-painted films, found footage movies, puppet animation, and live action. The international reach of Mancia’s programming interests is represented here with films from the United States, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, and Germany.

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World AIDS Day: Erasure in Elegy in the Streets

World AIDS Day: Erasure in Elegy in the Streets

December 1st is World AIDS Day, an international day dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic and honoring those who we have lost to HIV/AIDS. On this day of consciousness-raising, mourning, and remembrance, GME is honored to welcome Jim Hubbard’s ELEGY IN THE STREETS (1989) on DSL into our library of films currently available for international institutional acquisition.

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