GME News
Gartenberg Media Enterprises mourns the loss of legendary filmmaker Ken Jacobs, who passed away on October 5th, 2025, at the age of 92. A founding member of The Film-Makers' Cooperative, Millennium Film Workshop, and the Film Department at Binghamton University, Jacobs was a titan of the New York and global avant-garde filmmaking community for over 60 years.
Read MoreToday we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from September related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. At the beginning of the month, GME announced our shift to focusing on the distribution of moving image works available as Digital Site Licenses (DSLs). As part of this transition, we announced our distribution of Steve Bilich’s experimental short documentary NATIVE NEW YORKER as well as the early films of Warren Sonbert and films directed by Pierre Clémenti.
Read MoreTonight, October 7th, at 5:30pm in the Bruno Walter Auditorium, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will screen experimental works from the Reserve Film and Video Collection that explores the history of queer filmmakers. The program, titled What’s Happening? Affirmations: A Celebration of the LGBTQ+ Gaze, includes 16mm prints from Jack Smith and Gregory Markopoulos as well as an important selection of films by women filmmakers (such as Barbara Hammer and Sadie Benning) and a seminal work by African-American artist Marlon Riggs.
This event is being held in recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month and is part of a larger series that looks at “deep cuts” from the Reserve Film and Video Collection's historic 16mm film and video holdings. Co-curated by GME President Jon Gartenberg and RFVC Film Collection Specialist Elena Rossi-Snook, this screening features films that carve out creative queer identities from an historically heteronormative society in celebratory fashion.
Read MoreOver the past several decades, GME has embarked on a distribution project to release DVDs and Blu-Rays of moving image works that are destined exclusively for purchase by the university market in North America. As the transition to server-based media has grown, we feel that this is the appropriate moment, due to the shift in technology, to offer our catalogue of DVD and Blu-Ray titles at a 20% discount. A number of these titles are rare, out-of-print editions for which GME still retains copies.
Read MoreToday we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from June related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, GME publicly presented the World Premiere digital restorations of a selection of the early films of Warren Sonbert at Metrograph on June 8th. GME also attended the 2025 Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards, which honored two of our longtime friends and colleaugues: Jim Hubbard and James Wentzy. Furthermore, GME screened Allan King’s groundbreaking documentary WARRENDALE this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room.
Read MoreGartenberg 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.
Read MoreOn Saturday, April 12th, at 7:30pm, Warren Sonbert’s CARRIAGE TRADE screened at Anthology Film Archives as part of their Essential Cinema series, “a special series of films screened on a repertory basis… assembled in 1970—75 by Anthology’s Film Selection Committee — James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, P. Adams Sitney, and Jonas Mekas.” 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreToday 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.
Read MoreFrom October 18th to November 28th, the Austrian Film Museum mounted a retrospective of the films of Robert Kramer. GME distributes eight films by Kramer, four of which — THE EDGE, ICE, GUNS, IN THE COUNTRY, and VIDEOLETTERS — were featured in the retrospective.
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