GME Announces Two New Titles From James Benning, Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of two new titles featuring four films by James Benning, NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR as well as DESERET / FOUR CORNERS, now available for institutional sales in North America. These two DVD editions are published by the Austrian Filmmuseum as part of the Edition Filmmuseum series.

“It is perhaps because James Benning’s work is so resistant to neat categorization that his films have rarely received the recognition they deserve.  His work fuses elements of American structuralism, the narrative avant-garde and experimental documentary.” 

– Danni Zuvela, “Talking about Seeing: A Conversation with James Benning”

JAMES BENNING: NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR

Since the late 1970s, James Benning's films have been a regular fixture at festivals in Germany and Austria, while frequent television broadcasts have helped expose his work to an even larger audience here than perhaps at home. This 2-disc set presents the products of this intercontinental relationship: RUHR, Benning's first foray into digital filmmaking, is a modern-day "city symphony" dedicated to Germany's industrial Ruhr district. His latest work, NATURAL HISTORY, is an audiovisual portrait commissioned by Vienna's Natural History Museum.
 
Reinhard Wulf's feature-length documentary JAMES BENNING: CIRCLING THE IMAGE, produced for German television, is a DVD extra that significantly illuminates Benning’s working method, that illuminates the manner in which his films are composed of carefully-timed, long takes and precisely selected, fixed camera positions.

JAMES BENNING: DESERET / FOUR CORNERS

“I could not have imagined that Benning’s fiftieth birthday [in 1992] would signal the beginning of the most remarkable era in his creative life…With the exception of Luis Buñuel and Alfred Hitchcock, I can think of no filmmakers who has blossomed so impressively so late in his career.”

– Scott MacDonald

In the 1990s, James Benning's films were primarily characterized by an ongoing investigation of the relationship between the image and the (spoken or written) word. This 2-disc set features the two key works representing the peak of this "text-image film" period. DESERET and FOUR CORNERS are rigorous attempts to address, engage and come to terms with the history and geography of the United States, as seen through the prism of one particular part of the country. The beauty of the shimmering landscapes is contrasted with darker exposés of American history.

In DESERET, Benning retells the history of America's Mormon State of Utah, by fusing more than 90 separate shots (comprising spectacular black & white and color landscape images), with a voiceover narrator quoting articles published in New York Times between 1852 and 1992 that reference the violent struggles between Mormons, Native Americans, and the Federal Government, as well as nuclear/biological weaponry and toxic waste sites. 
 
Benning's following film FOUR CORNERS is both a tribute to the famous region in the USA where four states converge (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah) and a portrait of four very different artists (impressionist pioneer Claude Monet, African-American folk artist Moses Tolliver, fictional Native-American wall-painter ‘Yukawa’, and Abstract Expressionist Jasper Johns). The voiceover narration deals with natural and man-made forces that have rent destruction upon the Native American population in this region.

Additional Benning Titles of Related Interest from GME

CASTING A GLANCE / RR (2007)

AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) / LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (1984 / 1986)

CALIFORNIA TRILOGY (1999-2001)

GME Announces Silent French Serial The House of Mystery, Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of the epic French serial, THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY (LA MAISON DU MYSTÈRE), now available for institutional sales in North America.

Serial films, or ciné romans were well-established in France before World War I, where they are most closely identified with writer-director Louis Feuillade (JUDEX, also distributed by GME). These melodramas for adult audiences were unlike American serials that were targeted primarily at youngsters. At Albatros, Russian émigré producer Joseph Ermolieff produced three serials in 1921, all adapted from roman-feuilletons by the phenomenally successful Jules Mary, a specialist in the genre, who penned many a famous melodrama around the theme of the miscarriage of justice - a theme that must have had special appeal for the unjustly displaced technicians and artists of Ermolieff's Moscow and Yalta studios (see also the Albatros productions FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS IN PARIS (1923-1929) and THE LATE MATHIAS PASCAL (1926), distributed as well by GME).
 
THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY was begun in the summer of 1921 and not completed until 1923 by Alexandre Volkoff (together with fellow studio director Viatcheslav Tourjansky who provides some important and uncredited second-unit work). The first two serials have not left a trace in the annals of film archives. Fortunately, THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY has survived and ben restored by the Cinémathèque Française in its original ten-episode format. This DVD version, published by Flicker Alley, contains optional English subtitles by Lenny Borger and a brand-new score by composer Neil Brand.
 
The involved plot of THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY centers around Julien Villandrit (Ivan Mosjoukine) and his star-crossed courtship to Régine de Bettigny (Hélène Darly), that inspires bitterness and jealousy in Henri Corradin (Charles Vanel), Julien's long-time associate and secret rival in love. For Mosjoukine, who contracted typhoid fever during the course of production, it remains one of the ultimate consecrations to his multifarious talents as actor, writer, and even make-up artist. But the film also opened doors for Vanel (LES MISÉRABLES, THE WAGES OF FEAR, and DIABOLIQUE), who gives the "Curses! Foiled again!" school of melodramatic villainy a new lease on life.
 
This six and a half hour epic film is replete with stylish elegance and narrative imagination. About THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, authoritative film scholar Kristen Thompson has written:

“Like so many of the major French films of the 1920s, especially the Impressionist ones, LA MAISON DU MYSTÈRE combines a sentimental, old-fashioned story with unconventional stylistic devices: unusual pictorial motifs, beautiful cinematography and design, and imaginative staging. It is probably this visual interest that led to the film’s original acceptance by reviewers and to its enthusiastic reception by modern historians and silent-film buffs.

One visual motif that begins early on is silhouettes. The opening involves Mosjoukine’s character, Julien, still a bumptious, naive young man, courting Régine, the daughter of a wealthy couple who live near his chateau (the “maison” of the title). Despite his shyness, they manage to become engaged and walk joyfully through the woods together. The entire wedding scene is then compressed into a series of shots done against bright white backgrounds render the actors and settings in near-black silhouettes. The result looks like a live-action version of a Lotte Reiniger cut-out animated film.”

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Additional Albatros Studio Productions & Silent Serials of Related Interest from GME

 

FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS IN PARIS (1923-1929)

Ivan Mosjoukine, Alexandre Volkoff, Marcel L’Herbier, Jacques Feyder
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France (1923-1929)

THE LATE MATHIAS PASCAL

Marcel L'Herbier
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France (1926)

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JUDEX

Louis Feuillade
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France (1917)

MISS MEND

Fedor Ozep
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USSR (1927)

Gunvor Nelson's "DEPARTURES" screening at Cornell Cinema's "Cornell Alums Make Movies."

Gunvor Nelson’s MY NAME IS OONA and MOONS POOL will be screened in Cornell University’s Sage Chapel on Tuesday April 21 at 8pm, accompanied by the music of Powerdove. The artist’s films are distributed by Cornell Alum Jon Gartenberg’s company, GME.

http://cinema.cornell.edu/series_Spring2015/Cornell%20Alums%20Make%20Movies.html

GME Announces Spring 2015 Releases

GME DVD Distribution –  Spring 2015 Releases With the spring academic season now underway, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to present a new slate of DVD titles for distribution to the North American academic community. These publications, selected from film archives and boutique presses worldwide, represent an entire century of cinematic history, ranging from the silent French serial THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY (1919) to the latest digital production of experimental artist James Benning (NATURAL HISTORY, 2014). ◊ Serial films, or ciné romans were well-established in France before World War I, where they are most closely identified with writer-director Louis Feuillade (see JUDEX, also distributed by GME).  We now present (also from Flicker Alley) the silent serial entitled THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY (1923), produced by Albatros Studios, a company founded by émigré filmmakers in Paris following the Russian revolution (see also FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS in Paris (1923-1929). The serial THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY, directed by Alexandre Volkoff, and starring the versatile actor Ivan Mosjoukine, is based on a novel by Jules Mary centered on the theme of the miscarriage of justice; the film is replete with stylish elegance and narrative imagination. In the vein of Russian serials, GME has previous released MISS MEND (1927), an adventure serial in three parts directed by Fedor Ozep (assisted by Boris Barnet). ◊ Parallel to the foundation of the Albatros Studios, the 1920s saw the apotheosis of Soviet filmmaking.  GME currently feature several new DVD publications under the label Edition Filmmuseum; they are produced by the film archive in Vienna, which is noted for its significant holdings of Soviet-era films.  This archive is especially noted for its meticulous research and presentation of DVD editions of Soviet filmmakers’ works that often allow comparisons of different versions of the same film. From the EFM/Vienna, GME has previously released Lev Kuleshov’s BY THE LAW and Dziga Vertov’s early sound masterwork, ENTUZIAZM. These releases comprise works by 3 of the great Soviet filmmakers: Sergei Eisenstein (BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN / OCTOBER) Dziga Vertov (THREE SONGS OF LENIN), and Mikael Kalatozov (SALT OF SVANETIA / NAIL IN THE BOOT).  Kalazatov is better known for his Soviet films of the 1950’s and 1960’s – THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1959), LETTER NEVER SENT (1959), and I AM CUBA (1964); this DVD edition presents two of his early, pioneering silent films – SALT FOR SVANETIA an austere depiction of peasant life in the inhospitable terrain of the Caucusas mountains and NAIL IN THE BOOT, a biting parable of negligence in wartime. Vertov’s THREE SONGS OF LENIN is the filmmaker’s poem to the founder of the Soviet Union, and this DVD edition including both the silent and sound versions of the film).  Eisenstein’s masterpieces POTEMKIN is presented in painstakingly restored German-language versions (both silent and sound), and OCTOBER highlights the original release together with fragments from the version distributed in Germany; all editions feature the accompanying scores by Austrian-born composer Edmund Meisel.  For additional Soviet titles distributed by GME, see LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM. ◊ Austrian native Martina Kudláček has established a unique filmmaking legacy by creating discursive documentaries on experimental cinema personalities that have included Maya Deren (IN THE MIRROR OF MAYA DEREN [2002]) and Alexander Hammid (AIMLESS WALK [1997]). GME is pleased to present the release of DVD editions of Kudláček’s two most recent films, NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN (2006) and FRAGMENTS OF KUBELKA (2012). In a discursive yet deliberately paced style, Kudláček creates indelible portraits of the creative and impactful filmmakers Marie Menken (1909-1970) and Peter Kubelka, who is still active making films on celluloid film stock. NOTES ON MARIE MENKEN brings into focus the underground film icon Marie Menken, best known for her role as a protagonist in Andy Warhol's CHELSEA GIRLS (1966). Beginning with the excavation of Marie's rusty film cans, old photographs, and papers housed in a storage locker, Kudláček brings Menken vividly back to life through clips from her films and conversations with her creative compatriots, especially fellow artist Gerard Malanga.   Several years in the making, Martina Kudláček’s 4 hour essay film FRAGMENTS OF KUBELKA runs four times the length of artist Peter Kubelka’s entire cinematic output. She patiently follows his daily rituals and creative life (from cooking to filmmaking), and thereby provides a unique window into Kubelka’s world view in which he patiently digests “the manifold things of the universe” (Tom Gunning).     ◊ James Benning’s distinctive work has primarily focused on the depiction of landscapes through the passage of time, layered with offscreen sound and on occasion with superimposed text. From 1971 until 2007, James Benning shot these films uniquely in 16mm; this body of work has been heretofore unavailable in digital format. Recently, under a longstanding partnership with the Vienna Filmmuseum, his films are being made available in high quality DVD editions. GME has previously released 3 of these publications – AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST & FOUND) / LANDSCAPE SUICIDE, CALIFORNIA TRILOGY, and CASTING A GLANCE / RR. We now offer the latest DVD edition of Benning’s work, entitled DESERET / FOUR CORNERS, that continues his investigation into landscapes of the American West, and between the visual image and the spoken or written word. In 2007, Benning abandoned celluloid filmmaking – primarily due to increasing problems with laboratory work and film projection. and turned, in partnership with German production company, digital work (motivated by problems in laboratories and projection). In this vein, GME presents the DVD edition NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR, comprising Benning’s very first digital production, RUHR, a modern day city symphony set in the industrial region of Germany, together with NATURAL HISTORY, a portrait commissioned by Vienna’s Natural History Museum. ◊ Peter von Bagh, an award-winning filmmaker, writer, critic, and programmer, who recently passed away at age 71, was one of the foremost authorities on international cinema . His extensive and unique body of work include some 50 films and 30 books. In homage to this brilliant figure of international cinema, GME is honored to represent the distribution of a package of his films. THE FINNISH SUITE includes three documentary feature films that make up an important part of von Bagh's works in the 21st century. HELSINKI, FOREVER (2008) is a portrait and city symphony of the White City of North; SPLINTERS – A CENTURY OF AN ARTISTIC FAMILY (2011) explores the story of Finnish art through a versatile family of artists, without forgetting wider links to European cultural currents; and REMEMBRANCE – A SMALL MOVIE ABOUT OULU IN THE 1950’S (2013) is the director's most intimate film in which he returns to his youth and his hometown of Oulu. The city is located in Northern Finland, and yet it could be anywhere in war-torn but forward-gazing Europe. In this trilogy of films, Peter von Bagh creates both an extraordinarily personal – yet at the same time universal – meditation about cinematic time, space and memory. These DVDs are currently being made available to universities, libraries, museums, and other educational organizations in North America (US and Canada), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged. Please Note: Many of our DVDs are published in PAL format Region 0.   PAL DVDs require a PAL or Multi-system DVD player for playback. Order by Phone @ 212.280.8654 or by Fax @ 212.280.8656   For inquiries and to order by e-mail, contact: sales@gartenbergmedia.com   For our entire DVD/Blu-ray catalogue, as a printable PDF, click here. For latest announcement about our releases please visit: gartenbergmedia.com/news

Upcoming Screenings of Interest in NYC – The Most Dangerous Game & Landscape Suicide – DVD/Blu-rays Available from GME for North American Institutional Sales

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GME Announces Launch of Newly-Designed Website for DVD and Blu-ray Releases

GME Announces Launch of Newly-Designed Website for DVD and Blu-ray Releases Gartenberg Media (GME) is proud to announce the launch of our newly-designed website. GME is actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications of films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde. "The superb dedication of such entities as the Criterion Collection, Milestone Films, and Gartenberg Media Enterprises, to name key players, are making possible access to a wealth of cinematic history, ephemera, and value-added materials." As the educational film market has radically shifted from 16mm celluloid film distribution to DVD and Blu-ray editions, the contours of film history are being significantly reshaped. Well-known films are now re-released in new, high-quality digital transfers by film archives and boutique publishers, and lesser-known films from the course of moving image history are made available for the first time in video format. Bonus features and accompanying authoritative booklets frequently supplement these digital editions in order to contextualize such important works in new ways. Both classic films and avant-garde cinema are represented by GME through a wide array of publications, organized into the following general groupings, that are specifically oriented toward academic teaching purposes and study:   Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts International Silent Classics Film History & Documentaries Danish Silent Film Classics Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video Clicking on any of the above categories provides a listing of DVD/Blu-ray publications within the respective area of study. By then clicking on a title, an enhanced product page provides descriptive text and photos about the moving image works; as well, an updated contents area lists filmographic and technical details about the individual publication, including bonus material and booklet information. A separate search bar also provide access to publication titles and production credits related to our DVD and Blu-ray offerings (as well as throughout the entire GME website). These DVDs are currently being made available to universities, libraries, museums, and other educational organizations in North America (US and Canada), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged. Please Note: Many of our DVDs are published in PAL format Region 0.   PAL DVDs require a PAL or Multi-system DVD player for playback. Order by Phone @ 212.280.8654 or by Fax @ 212.280.8656   For inquiries and to order by e-mail, contact: sales@gartenbergmedia.com   For our entire DVD/Blu-ray catalogue, as a printable PDF, click here. For our latest news releases please visit: gartenbergmedia.com/news Watch for next week’s announcement of our Spring semester DVD releases.

Invisible Adversaries by Valie Export at Cornell Cinema

INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES by Valie Export will be shown at Cornell Cinema on March 3rd at 7pm. This title was licensed to Cornell by GME for institutional use.

GME DVD Distribution - Fall 2014 Academic Recap

GME DVD Distribution - Fall 2014 Academic Recap "The superb dedication of such entities as the Criterion Collection, Milestone Films, and Gartenberg Media Enterprises, to name key players, are making possible access to a wealth of cinematic history, ephemera, and value-added materials."           - B. Ruby Rich, Film Quarterly Winter 2013   CHAPLIN'S MUTUAL COMEDIES Charles Chaplin DREAMINIMALIST Tony Conrad & Marie Losier GUNS OF THE TREES  Jonas Mekas HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS Hans Richter THE MACK SENNETT COLLECTION: VOLUME ONE Mack Sennett MENSCHEN UNTEREINANDER & UNTER DER LATERNE Gerhard Lamprecht NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM Norbert Pfaffenbichler RAMEAU'S NEPHEW Michael Snow THE SIXTIES QUARTET Jonas Mekas DIE VERRUFENEN (DER FÜNFTE STAND) & DIE UNEHELICHEN Gerhard Lamprecht As the winter break approaches, Gartenberg Media is pleased once again to provide a recap of the DVD and Blu-ray publications that we've offered throughout the fall academic semester.  Carefully selected from boutique publishers, these releases span more than a century of motion picture history, from slapstick comedy producer Mack Sennett's The Curtain Pole (1909) to contemporary Austrian artist Norbert Pfaffenbichler's Intermezzo (2012). In our Film History section, we previously featured a multi-volume DVD publication that comprises 200 films (dating from 1896-1913) made by Georges Méliès, the pioneer French producer-director of trick films (GEORGES MÉLIÈS: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA  and GEORGES MÉLIÈS: ENCORE).  We now offer THE MACK SENNETT COLECTION, VOLUME ONE (published by Flicker Alley), comprising a compilation of 50 films (dating from 1909-1933) from the pre-eminent slapstick comedy producer (and director) of the silent and early sound era.  These films featured a star-studded array of a the leading comics of the time, including Roscoe "Fatty' Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Harry Langdon, W.C. Fields, Mabel Normand, and Charlie Chaplin. Of all these comedians, Charlie Chaplin, of course, was the most famous global icon.  Augmenting our previous release of the multi-volume CHAPLIN AT KEYSTONE, we now offer a further in-depth study of his artistry with CHAPLIN'S MUTUAL COMEDIES (also from Flicker Alley).  These accomplished productions date from 1916-17, a period when the Chaplin was further refining his Tramp character, perfecting his impeccable comic timing, and introducing pathos into his films. Gerhard Lamprecht is most well known in film history circles for his multi-volume compilation of German film productions, Deutsche Stummfilme, dating from 1903-1931.  In 1963, he founded the Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin). During the intervening period (1920-1958) he directed more than 60 films, and is best remembered today for his 1931 film version of Emil and the Detectives, scripted by Billy Wilder.  Now, the film archive which Lamprecht founded and Edition Filmmuseum have published four of his silent features from the years 1925-1928, in two separate DVD editions: DIE VERRUFENEN (DER FÜNFTE STAND) & DIE UNEHELICHEN and MENSCHEN UNTEREINANDER & UNTER DER LATERNE.  Each volume re-presents long-unavailable work by this legendary, yet overlooked, master of early German cinema, an artist due for rediscovery in North America. Paralleling the first decade of Lamprecht's moviemaking career in Germany, artist Hans Richter was creating movies in the abstract and Dadaist vein, while also increasingly turning to social critique in his later films.  Here, for the first time, we offer HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS (1921-1929), published by Re:Voir Vidéo. The European avant-garde artists of the 1920's inspired experimental filmmakers in postwar America.  Tony Conrad's seminal abstract film, The Flicker (1966), can be seen in this context through comparison with Richter's Rhythmus films. The Re:Voir DVD publication, DREAMINIMALIST, couples Conrad's film with Marie Losier's contemporary cinematic portrait of the artist, Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist (2008), which focuses on a performative representation of his creative work and individual identity. In this cycle of releases, we are especially proud to feature, for the first time, work by Michael Snow, Canada's pre-eminent filmmaker and photographer.  His film 'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen investigates the meaning of a "Talking Picture", i.e., the relationship between recorded speech and image in cinema. The DVD publication of RAMEAU'S NEPHEW, from Re:Voir, comprises not only this film, but also a 184-page bilingual book of essays, preparatory scripts for the film, and analysis of the 25 sequences of the film.  Jonas Mekas is the most significant force behind the evolution and promotion of the American Avant-Garde film movement, as well as one of its most prolific independent filmmakers and pre-eminent cinema poets.  Following up on our release last semester of JONAS MEKAS: THE MAJOR WORKS, we now offer both his rarely seen first feature length film, GUNS OF THE TREES, a fictional narrative of the Beat Generation, as well as, in a more poetic vein, THE SIXTIES QUARTET, that features portraits of Andy Warhol, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and the Kennedy family at Warhol's compound in Montauk, just several years after the assassination of President Kennedy.  All Jonas Mekas titles are published by Re:Voir. Last, but not least, in the vein of found footage filmmaking, we complement our previous release of GUSTAV DEUTSCH - FILM IST. (1-12), with the recent work (2002 - 2012) of NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER - NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM, both published by Sixpack Films/INDEX DVD.  For a complete list of DVD and Blu-ray publications from our entire library of distribution titles, as a printable PDF, click here.  Please note that all of these titles are currently available for order processing.   These DVDs are currently being made available to universities, libraries, museums, and other educational organizations in North America (US and Canada), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged. Please Note: Many of our DVDs are published in PAL format Region 0.   PAL DVDs require a PAL or Multi-system DVD player for playback. Order by Phone @ 212.280.8654 or by Fax @ 212.280.8656 For inquiries and to order by e-mail, contact: sales@gartenbergmedia.com For our entire DVD catalogue, please visit: www.gartenbergmedia.com/dvd/

GME Celebrates Jonas Mekas's Birthday with the Release of Two New Publications of His Films Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

GME Celebrates Jonas Mekas's Birthday  With the Release of 2 New Publications of His Films Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales On the occasion of Jonas Mekas's 92nd birthday (on XMAS eve of this year), Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of two new DVD publications by this monumental and consequential artist.  Published on DVD by Re:Voir Vidéo -- GUNS OF THE TREES and THE SIXTIES QUARTET -- are now available for institutional sales in North America.   Jonas Mekas is the most significant force behind the evolution and promotion of the American Avant-Garde film movement, as well as one of its most prolific independent filmmakers and pre-eminent cinema poets. Following up on our release last semester of JONAS MEKAS: THE MAJOR WORKS, we now offer both his rarely seen first feature length film, GUNS OF THE TREES, a fictional narrative of the Beat Generation, as well as, in a more poetic vein, THE SIXTIES QUARTET, that features portraits of Andy Warhol, George Maciunas, John Lennon, and the Kennedy family at Warhol's compound in Montauk, just several years after the assassination of President Kennedy.       GUNS OF THE TREES "Four young people are trying to understand why their friend, a young woman, committed a suicide. A film made up of disconnected scenes weaving between past and present. The title of the film comes from a poem by Stuart Perkoff which tells that some young people felt (around 1960) that everything is against them, so much that even the trees in the parks and streets seemed to them like guns pointing at their very existence." - Jonas Mekas Grand Prize / Grand prix (Najade d'oro)  Mostra Internazionale del Cinema Libero di Porretta Terme, 1962   GUNS OF THE TREES Jonas Mekas   USA (1961) DVD-PAL   Region 0 No Regional Code Institutional Sale Price: $ 200.00 plus shipping & handling.    THE SIXTIES QUARTET Scenes From The Life Of Andy Warhol: Friendships And Intersections (1990) "This film is made up of my film diaries relating to Andy Warhol from the years 1965-1982."                                                                       - Jonas Mekas Zefiro Torna Or Scenes From The Life Of George Maciunas (1992) "Bits of Fluxus events and performances, and picnics with friends (Almus, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, etc.), George's wedding and footage I took of him in Boston hospital three days before he died."          - Jonas Mekas Happy Birthday To John (1995) "On October 9th, 1972, half of the music world gathered in Syracuse, N.Y., to celebrate the opening of John Lennon/Yoko Ono Fluxus show, designed by George Maciunas.  Same day, a smaller group gathered in a local hotel room to celebrate John's birthday."                                                     - Jonas Mekas This Side Of Paradise (1999) with Jackie, Caroline and John Kennedy Jr. "Unpredictably, as most of my life's key events have been, for a period of several years in the late 60s and early 70s, I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship. The time was still very close to the untimely, tragic, death of John F. Kennedy. Jackie wanted to give something to her children to do, to help to ease the transition of life without a father. One of her thoughts was that movie camera would be fun for the children. Peter Beard, who was at that time tutoring John Jr. and Caroline in art history, suggested to Jackie that I was the man to introduce the children to cinema. Jackie said yes. And that's how it all began. I bought them a very easily operable 16mm movie camera, and even wrote a "mini-textbook" suggesting some simple movie exercises... The images in the exposition, with a few exceptions, they all come from the summers Caroline and John Jr. spent in Montauk, with their cousins Anthony and Tina Radziwill, in an old house Lee rented from Andy Warhol, for a few summers. Andy himself spent many of his weekends there, in one of the cottages, as did Peter Beard, whom the children had adopted almost like their older brother or a father they missed. There were summers of happiness, joy and continuous celebrations of life and friendships. These are 'Little Fragments of Paradise.' "                                                   -Jonas Mekas   THE SIXTIES QUARTET Jonas Mekas   USA (1990-1999) DVD-PAL   Region 0 No Regional Code Institutional Sale Price: $ 200.00 plus shipping & handling.      Works of Related Interest from GME:  HALLELUJAH THE HILLS Adolfas Mekas    USA (1963) JONAS MEKAS: THE MAJOR WORKS Jonas Mekas    USA (1964-2002) 7-Disc DVD Collection For a complete list of DVD and Blu-ray publications from our entire library of distribution titles, as a printable PDF, click here.   These DVDs are currently being made available to universities, libraries, museums, and other educational organizations in North America (US and Canada), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged. Please Note: Many of our DVDs are published in PAL format Region 0.   PAL DVDs require a PAL or Multi-system DVD player for playback. Order by Phone @ 212.280.8654 or by Fax @ 212.280.8656 For inquiries and to order by e-mail, contact: sales@gartenbergmedia.com For our entire DVD catalogue, please visit: www.gartenbergmedia.com/dvd/

GME Announces 3 New Releases of Avant-Garde Films Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Announces 3 New Releases of Avant-Garde Films Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of three new DVD publications spanning a century of avant-garde filmmaking practice (1921-2012).  These DVD publications -- HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS, DREAMINIMALIST: TONY CONRAD AND MARIE LOSIER, and NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER: NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM -- are now available for institutional sales in North America.          During the period in the 1920's that Gerhard Lamprecht was directing narrative films based on working class life in postwar Berlin (see DIE VERRUFENEN (DER FÜNFTE STAND) & DIE UNEHELICHEN and MENSCHEN UNTEREINANDER & UNTER DER LATERNE), also available from GME), his German compatriot Hans Richter was creating movies in the abstract and Dadaist vein, while also increasingly turning to social critique in his later films.  Here, for the first time, we offer HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS (1921-1929), published by Re:Voir Vidéo. About his filmmaking practice, Richter himself wrote in 1924 that "By film I mean visual rhythm... to see movement, organized movement, wakes us up, wakes up resistance, wakes up the reflexes, and perhaps wakes up our sense of enjoyment as well." Richter emigrated to the United States in 1940 and taught in the Institute of Film Techniques at City College in New York City; his teachings would influence many of the "New American Cinema" filmmakers.  HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS Hans Richter   Germany Rhythmus 21 (1921) Rhythmus 23 (1923) Filmstudie (1926) Ghosts Before Breakfast (Vormittagsspuk) (1927-28) Race Symphony (1928-29) Two Pence Magic (Zweigroschenzauber) (1928-29) Inflation (1927) Everything Turns Everything Revolves (1929)  DVD-PAL   Region 0 No Regional Code Institutional Sale Price: $ 200.00 plus shipping & handling. The Re:Voir DVD publication, DREAMINIMALIST couples Tony Conrad's film The Flicker (1966) with Marie Losier's contemporary cinematic portrait of the artist,  entitled Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist (2008). Tony Conrad was born in 1940, the year that Hans Richter emigrated to the United States.  His groundbreaking minimalist and structural film, The Flicker (1966), comprising alternating black and white frames, can be seen, on one level, as an outgrowth of Richter's Rhythmus films, and, from another perspective, as distinctly different from that filmmaker's approach. "in The Flicker, Tony Conrad uses cinematographic devices to develop relationships between impossible harmonic frequencies using an ordinary stroboscope. At the root of this film are a musical, a visual and a psychological interest."                                                           - Victor Gresard Marie Losier has, over the course of her career, made cinematic portraits of noteworthy underground figures, including Richard Foreman, the Kuchar Brothers, Guy Maddin, Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye.  In Tony Conrad: DreaMinimalist, she turns her gaze on Tony Conrad, and foregrounds a contemporary, performative representation of his creative universe. DREAMINIMALIST Tony Conrad & Marie Losier    USA The Flicker (1966) Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist (2008) Tony Conrad & Marie Losier    DVD-PAL   Region 0 No Regional Code Institutional Sale Price: $ 200.00 plus shipping & handling.  Also in the vein of contemporary experimental cinema, GME is proud to present the DVD publication (published by Sixpack Films/Index DVD) entitled NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER: NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM.  Comprising recent work produced by the artist between 2002 and 2012, his found footage films manipulate images ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Lon Chaney, and from Fräulein Else to Adolph Hitler. As film historian Chrisoph Huber has written in the booklet accompanying this DVD publication, "Pfaffenbichler's unique sensibility finds expression in a growing emphasis upon the comic and the uncanny, whereby his avant-garde and often structuralist approach is coupled with an ever-increasing pleasure in playful experimentation. The source material is simultaneously de- and re-constructed, ... It is impossible to come away from a Pfaffenbichler film without an altered and enriched sense of cinema, its history and possibilities."  NORBERT PFAFFENBICHLER: NOTES ON NOTES ON FILM Norbert Pfaffenbichler   Austria Notes On Film 01 Else (2002) Conference (Notes On Film 05) (2011) Intermezzo (Notes On Film 04) (2012) A Messenger From The Shadows (Notes On Film 06A/Monologue 01) (2012) 36 (2001) Norbert Pfaffenbichler & Lotte Schreiber      DVD-PAL   Region 0 No Regional Code Institutional Sale Price: $ 200.00 plus shipping & handling.      Additional Abstract, Dada & Surrealist, Structural, and Found Footage Films of Related Interest from GME  CINÉMA DADA Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Man Ray, René Clair & Francis Picabia,  Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy    Germany & France (1921-1927)  GUSTAV DEUTSCH - FILM IST. (1-12) Gustav Deutsch    Austria (2004)  FLUXFILM ANTHOLOGY George Maciunas, John Cale, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Paul Sharits,  Benjamin Vautier, Robert Watts, and more    USA (1962-1970) MANDALA FILMS Paul Sharits    USA (1966-1968) THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN Germaine Dulac    France (1927) PETER TSCHERKASSKY: ATTRACTIONS, INSTRUCTIONS & OTHER ROMANCES Peter Tscherkassky    Austria (1982-2010) PETER TSCHERKASSKY: FILMS FROM A DARK ROOM Peter Tscherkassky   Austria (1983-2002) For a complete list of DVD and Blu-ray publications from our entire library of distribution titles, as a printable PDF, click here.   These DVDs are currently being made available to universities, libraries, museums, and other educational organizations in North America (US and Canada), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged. Please Note: Many of our DVDs are published in PAL format Region 0.   PAL DVDs require a PAL or Multi-system DVD player for playback. Order by Phone @ 212.280.8654 or by Fax @ 212.280.8656 For inquiries and to order by e-mail, contact: sales@gartenbergmedia.com For our entire DVD catalogue, please visit: www.gartenbergmedia.com/dvd/