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

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

Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from May related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, four films by Warren Sonbert screened at Shotgun Cinema in Missouri, and stills from Sonbert’s debut film AMPHETAMINE were featured in Maurice Nagington’s book The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach, now available in print. In terms of GME’s photography collections, we publicly announced our co-exclusive partnership with Getty Images to license Raimondo Borea’s photographs of The Today Show and The Tonight Show. GME also continued programming in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room last month with a double bill of films by King Vidor and Henry King.

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GME Attended the 2025 Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards at the SVA Theatre on June 3rd

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GME Attended the 2025 Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards at the SVA Theatre on June 3rd

GME President Jon Gartenberg, GME Fine Arts Curator David Deitch, and GME Associate Matt McKinzie were thrilled to attend the 2025 Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards on Tuesday, June 3rd, at the SVA Theatre. Among this year’s honorees were filmmaker and activist Jim Hubbard, whose film ELEGY IN THE STREETS is distributed digitally by GME to North American universities. Filmmaker and activist James Wentzy was also honored at this event; Gartenberg programmed Wentzy’s first feature-length documentary FIGHT BACK, FIGHT AIDS in the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival.

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Gartenberg Media and Getty Images Present Raimondo Borea's Photographs of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"

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Gartenberg Media and Getty Images Present Raimondo Borea's Photographs of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson"

Gartenberg Media Enterprises has partnered with Getty Images to make Raimondo Borea's behind-the-scenes photographs of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson available for licensing. GME and Getty have entered into a co-exclusive agreement to more widely share these historically significant images with the public. To license Borea's photographs of The Tonight Show via Getty Images, click here.

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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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Warren Sonbert's CARRIAGE TRADE Screened This Month at Anthology Film Archives

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Warren Sonbert's CARRIAGE TRADE Screened This Month at Anthology Film Archives

On 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.

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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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Three Warren Sonbert Films Screened at Doc Films at University of Chicago

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Three Warren Sonbert Films Screened at Doc Films at University of Chicago

On Sunday, April 13th, at 7pm, three films by Warren Sonbert — 1966’s HALL OF MIRRORS, 1986’s THE CUP AND THE LIP, and 1989’s FRIENDLY WITNESS — screened at Doc Films at the University of Chicago on 16mm. This program was introduced by film scholar Fred Camper, who has written extensively about Sonbert’s films, and screened as part of a larger Doc Films series curated by Hannah Yang, titled Encounters in the Cinema. Yang describes the series as “draw[ing] attention to… the way in which both film and spectator shape each other, and cinema as a whole, in the dark space of the movie theater.”

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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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