FRAMEWORK, Volume 64, No. 2: The Early Films of Warren Sonbert (1966-1973)

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FRAMEWORK, Volume 64, No. 2: The Early Films of Warren Sonbert (1966-1973)

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to announce the publication of Volume 64, No. 2, of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, which is devoted to writings about the early films of Warren Sonbert. Jon Gartenberg was named the custodian of Sonbert’s legacy, and since Sonbert's passing, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute, and curate career retrospectives of his work on an international basis. Furthermore, GME has facilitated the publication of original documents from his paper archive, which is now housed at Harvard University. This journal is Framework’s second issue devoted to Sonbert’s life and career. Volume 56, No. 1, published in Spring 2015, focused on Sonbert’s own writings. Gartenberg served as Guest Editor on both Framework issues.

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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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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

On November 23rd, 2024, QUEER DREAM TRIPTYCH, a found footage poem film by GME associate Matt McKinzie, screened at the Quad Cinema in the closing night program of MIX: The New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. The post-screening Q&A session with the filmmakers involved rich, cross-generational discourse pertaining to depictions of pleasure versus depictions of trauma, as related to queer identity and sexuality, in the selected films. This Q&A session was filmed and made available to the public on March 21st. GME President Jon Gartenberg, in attendance that evening with GME Fine Arts Curator David Deitch, commended the filmmakers for “externalizing their interior struggles on the screen,” praising their willingness to be “vulnerable” in their work and remarking that he found this kind of filmmaking — wherein the artists confronted their trauma in their art — to be “new and refreshing.”

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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: Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13

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Now Playing in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room: Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13

As a programmer at The Museum of Modern Art, Adrienne Mancia was an advocate of progressive “New Hollywood” filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola who, in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, subverted the moral and aesthetic traditions (and limitations) of the studio system by producing thematically and stylistically challenging work influenced by European cinema, the American avant-garde, and the countercultural ethos of the era at large. This month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, GME presents Coppola’s debut feature film DEMENTIA 13 (1963), which screened in MoMA’s November—December 2023 tribute to Mancia.

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

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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

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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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Naughty Films at the Library: Avant-Garde Works in the NYPL's Reserve Film and Video Collection

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Naughty Films at the Library: Avant-Garde Works in the NYPL's Reserve Film and Video Collection

Thursday, September 19th, at 5:30pm at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Curator Jon Gartenberg, in collaboration with NYPL Film Collection Specialist Elena Rossi-Snook, will present a program of avant-garde films from the Library's Reserve Film and Video Collection that deals with sex and censorship. After the screening, Gartenberg and Rossi-Snook will discuss the history and interpretation of these rarely-screened works. This event is free to attend and can be RSVPed here.

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