GME News
In order to enrich the selection of Experimental Narratives and Avant-Garde Shorts, GME is especially proud to now add legendary film artist Stan Brakhage to the collection, debuting here with his first masterful foray into the then still newly evolving long form of film experimentation with ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT (1958).
Read MoreThe program at Anthology Film Archives will include the premiere of TBDC’s new preservations of MAN WALKING DOWN THE SIDE OF A BUILDING and LEANING DUETS, as well as a very special 16mm triple-screen presentation of Babette Mangolte’s ROOF AND FIRE PIECE, unseen in this triptych format since the 1970s.
Jon Gartenberg of GME serves as an archival consultant to the Trisha Brown Dance Company.
Read MoreWith the spring academic season now underway, Gartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to present a brand-new slate of DVD and Blu-ray publications for distribution to the North American academic community. These digital editions are selected from film archives and boutique publishers worldwide, and represent the entire breadth and depth of moving image history. This current roster of moving image works extend from pioneering female director Alice Guy’s LES CHIENS SAVANTS (1902), part of an essential compilation of cinematic works by EARLY WOMEN FILMMAKERS, through to Peter Tscherkassky’s award-winning THE EXQUISITE CORPUS (2015), presented on the latest DVD compilation of his films, entitled EXQUISITE ECSTASIES (2015).
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Stan Brakhage is one of the seminal figures in 20th-century experimental cinema. His 1958 ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT is a benchmark of the lyrical film, which postulates the artist behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. Noted scholar P. Adams Sitney has written that “The great achievement of ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT is the distillation of an intense and complex interior crisis into an orchestration of sights and associations which adhere into a new formal rhetoric of camera movement and montage.” GME offers this film for the first time ever in a DVD/Blu-ray Combo Pak edition. As this film was not represented on the Criterion DVD of Brakhage’s work, this digital publication is therefore an essential addition to any teaching and library collection of this filmmaker’s oeuvre, of experimental cinema more broadly, and of modern art in general.
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The role of women filmmakers has been generally overlooked in the writing of film histories, and the Women Film Pioneer Project attempts to rectify this oversight, as does our release for academic use and study of the 6-disc DVD boxed set entitled EARLY WOMEN FILMMAKERS: AN INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY. International in scope, this groundbreaking collection features over 10 hours of material, comprised of 25 films spanning the years 1902-1943, including many rare titles not widely available until now, from shorts to feature films, live-action to animation, commercial narratives to experimental works. Directors include Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, Mabel Normand, Madeline Brandeis, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaia, Marie-Louise Iribe, Lotte Reiniger, Claire Parker, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), Leni Riefenstahl, Mary Ellen Bute, Dorothy Arzner, and Maya Deren. These women were technically and stylistically innovative, pushing the boundaries of narrative, aesthetics, and genre.
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The mid-1970s saw James Benning's first feature films attract the attention of critics, establishing him as a representative of the "New Narrative Movement." In these films, he combines the structural analysis of image, sound and narrative with auto-biographical traces, as well as with an almost "classical" interest in composition, color, light and landscape. GME is pleased to distribute to the academic community the most recent digital edition of films by James Benning. This 2-disc set features 11x14 (1977), one of the central U.S. avant-garde films of the 1970s, in a restored version. Also included is Benning's recurring view of his hometown Milwaukee at three different points in time: ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE (1978), 27 YEARS LATER (2005) and ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE 2012. These three films document both change and transience.
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We are especially proud to release two DVDs -- THE LAST CHANCE (1945) and SWISS TOUR (1949) --that GME has co-published with Praesens-Film AG, a Swiss production company founded in 1924 that is still active today. According to film scholar Yvonne Zimmerman, “The flagship Swiss movies produced by Praesens were made primarily by foreigners, immigrants and émigrés...Praesens founder Lazar Wechsler was a Jew of Polish origin who came to Switzerland from Austria in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I… and established Praesens-Film AG in 1924… Wechsler had been able to build a stable team of highly qualified staff, which turned out to be crucial to the success of the company. Not just Praesens, but Swiss cinema as a whole, benefited from the services of émigrés and repatriates from Germany, Austria and France who from 1933 sought refuge in Switzerland from National Socialist repression. The Praesens staff included director Leopold Lindtberg, scriptwriter Richard Schweizer, cameraman Emil Berna, composer Robert Blum and film editor Hermann Haller."
THE LAST CHANCE (1945) is one of the most important contributions to Swiss film history. This film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It carries on where Jean Renoir's LA GRANDE ILLUSION (1939) leaves off. Three escaped prisoners of war lead a caravan of refugees across the Swiss border to safety.
SWISS TOUR (1949) recounts a love story set against the backdrop of American soldiers stationed in Europe in the aftermath of WWII who are on leave in Switzerland. The main protagonist (American actor Cornel Wilde) was at the peak of his career, as wll as his two love interests; French actress Josette Day had created a sensation as Belle in LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), and Simone Signoret’s career was on the rise.
As per Yvonne Zimmermann, “Lazar Wechsler's cinema of humanism and international understanding played a significant part in the moral rehabilitation of Switzerland abroad. The fact that Swiss banks had managed German assets and accepted gold plundered by the Nazis during the war had damaged the country's image. Switzerland's reputation was particularly badly battered in the United States. In this light, SWISS TOUR can be seen as part of a cultural image campaign run by Switzerland in the United States.”
The DVD version of this edition originates from pristine nitrate film elements that GME discovered in warehouse storage in the New York metropolitan area. The Cinémathèque suisse acquired and preserved this material, and the restored film was shown at the Locarno Film Festival in 2007. GME subsequently collaborated with Praesens Film to produce this digital edition. This DVD is accompanied by an original essay by scholar Yvonne Zimmermann about SWISS TOUR, Praesens Film, and the larger cultural context in which these films were produced, together with an introduction by archivist Jon Gartenberg about rediscovering the film.
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GME is now pleased to offer a brand-new DVD edition of films by pre-eminent Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, entitled EXQUISITE ECSTASIES. This compilation includes 4 super-8 films from the 1980s (BLOOD-LETTING, FILM OF LOVE, HOLIDAY FILM, TABULA RASA) and THE EXQUISITE CORPUS, a 35mm film from 2015. Tscherkassky writes that “each of these films crystalizes an essential impulse at the heart of my entire artistic work: to expose the utterly distinct nature of analog transferrable to any other medium." And, according to Daniel Kasman, Tscherkassky’s film THE EXQUISITE CORPUS works to collapse the line between the filmed body and the celluloid Tscherkassky meticulously manipulates in his darkroom...This is where Tscherkassky's love for celluloid is wedded to his source films' love for flesh, where the pathways to climax -narrative and sexual- are built from the same component parts of mystery, attraction, rhythm, repetition, variation, new sensations, and ecstasy."
Following up on our previous release of a DVD compilation of Austrian filmmaker Dietmar Brehm’s works entitled BLACK GARDEN, GME now offers DIETMAR BREHM: PRAXIS SELECTION. According to Stephan Grissemann, “Brehm's PRAXIS series is driven by a spirit of enterprise that is clearly palpable. Since 1974 Brehm has been sensuously modulating his private iconography in ever new variations, ceaselessly engaged with his ever-growing image and sound archive, withdrawn into the interior of an infernal fantasy. There is no posturing behind his cool treatment of the disquieting signs in his work, but rather ennui, a loner life, solipsism. Dietmar Brehm orchestrates implosions and idling states. He could be seen as the representative of a telephone-game art movement: His work is post avant-garde, post-narrative, post-surreal, post-pornographic and post-psychoanalytic; it appears like an extra entry in the annals of a long since shelved cultural history, like a last-ditch effort of art after the end of time.”
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The films in this DVD edition comprise 3 of the films that Philippe Garrel made while he was still a teenager: LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS (1964), MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE (1967), and ACTUA 1 (1968); this constitutes the adolescent period of his filmography. These sound motion pictures immediately preceded the films from Garrel’s silent period, among them LE RÉVÉLATEUR (1968), LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (1969), and LES HAUTES SOLITUDES (1974). The films in this current DVD edition center on the trials and tribulations of youth, amidst a background of rising social consciousness and unrest. MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE, Garrel’s first feature-length film, represents the missing link between the New Wave filmmakers and the Zanzibar group -- an informal association of young filmmakers situated within the revolutionary movement of May 1968.
This DVD edition also includes his first short film (LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS), which he directed at age 16 in three days only, with the short ends from a film sketch by Claude Berri, with whom he was a trainee. Finally, there is the famous ACTUA I, a revolutionary news film --supported by Jean-Luc Godard -- on the month-long barricades of May '68, finally unearthed after 47 years from the JLG film archive.
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True to its title, the 1925, 10-reel version of THE LOST WORLD effectively disappeared from circulation in 1929—all known positive prints destroyed—a move by First National Pictures to help clear the way for another film utilizing special effects and Willis O’Brien’s cutting-edge animation techniques: King Kong. For more than 80 years, only abridged editions of THE LOST WORLD remained in existence until now. This Blu-ray edition (also available in a DVD MOD version) of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is the most complete version of the film ever released. The 2K digital restoration features newly-discovered scenes and special effect sequences, incorporating almost all original elements from archives and collections around the world.
The film follows Professor Challenger, played by the inimitable Wallace Beery, as he and a crew of curious explorers embark on an expedition in search of a mythical, prehistoric plateau in South America. Along for the adventure are eminent scientist Summerlee (Arthur Hoyt, the director’s brother), sportsman Sir John Roxton (Lewis Stone), journalist Ed Malone (Lloyd Hughes) and Paula White (Bessie Love), whose father disappeared on the same plateau. The party is not there long before the “lost world” of the jungle begins to reveal its secrets: a primitive ape-man, a Pterodactyl flying through the air, a massive Brontosaurus feeding upon the trees, the vicious Allosaurus, and many more monstrous beasts of the Jurassic age.
GME Gems is a new feature across all GME social media platforms that will frequently highlight treasures from our collections. We are launching this series with some visually dramatic and also lighthearted, even romantic sequences from legendary experimental Ken Jacobs' stereoscopic opus, CYCLOPEAN #3D: LIFE WITH A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
Read MoreGME's 3 Degrees of Oscar Separation
Georges Méliés and the rapper Common, both represented in GME's collections, made appearances at this year's Oscar's bash broadcast March 4, 2018.
Read MoreAnthology Film Archives will be showing "The Films of Dziga Vertov" as part of its Essential Cinema Repertory program from Wednesday, February 21 through Sunday, February 25. GME distributes these films in 3 DVD boxed sets for North American institutional sales.
Read MoreThe release of Anita Thatcher's film Homage to Magritte in 1975 coincided with the start of my own professional career working in MOMA’s film archive. Upon viewing it for the first time back then, her film left an indelible impression upon my mind, and has remained one of the main markers in my experimental film viewing experience.
Anteroom by Anita Thatcher
This film struck me both for the graphic beauty of the imagery as well as for its simple elegance in the representation of time and space in cinema. As did her later installation Anteroom (1982), recently reinstalled at Microscope Gallery, which confirmed for me that Anita Thatcher was truly an accomplished modern artist whose multidimensional career accomplishments are only now beginning to fully sink into our collective consciousness.
A few years before Anita became aware of her illness, she discussed with me the appropriate institution that could archive her films. I was happy to help think through the options and possibilities. I am very pleased to now announce that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has taken her films for archiving, preservation and eventual exhibition.
Click on this link to select sections of the program you wish to view.
During the past decade, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) has been actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications from film archives and boutique publishers around the world, representing films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These premiere publications are made available by GME exclusively for institutional purchase by the university market in North America. We currently offer more than 150 publications that are noted here. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.
"Archival practices are undergoing reinvention, too, both enabled and blocked by opportunistic technologies. On the one hand, 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
DVD / Blu-ray Categories
The DVD and Blu-ray publications are arranged on our website under several broad categories as noted below, that are designed to facilitate themes for academic curricula and library acquisition.
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Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts
This very rich category of cutting-edge moving image works (both film and video art) encompasses films from four continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, and extend from classic films from the silent era to contemporary time-based media. Broadly speaking, the filmmakers in this category consciously play with narrative form and structure through a wide range of cinematic techniques and styles. Works featured include such diverse filmmakers as James Benning, Abigail Child, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas (US); Michael Snow (Canada); Nicholas Pereda (Mexico); Heinz Emigholz, Werner Schroeter, and Hans Richter (Germany); Germaine Dulac, Philippe Garrel, Marcel Hanoun, and Rose Lowder (France); Val del Omar (Spain); Dziga Vertov (USSR); Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan); and Apichatpoing Weerasethakul (Thailand). See also the category of Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video.
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This category encompasses a selection of DVD and Blu-ray publications of films directed by major artists from around the world: Georges Méliès, Abel Gance, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Louis Feuillade (France); F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Gerhard Lamprecht (Germany); Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Mikhail Kalatozov, and Dziga Vertov (USSR); Segundo de Chomón (Spain); and Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennett, King Vidor, and Allan Dwan (United States). These films star such screen idols as Asta Nielsen, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Alla Nazimova, Ivan Mosjoukine, Erich Von Stroheim, and Emil Jannings. See also the category of Danish Silent Cinema.
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Film History & Documentaries comprises important nonfiction films by Robert Flaherty (United States), Henri Storck (Belgium), Peter Von Bagh (Finland), and Henri Georges Clouzot (France). Technical developments throughout film history are represented by the DVD publication DISCOVERING CINEMA, a two-disc set of early sound and color experiments, as well as three films featuring the Cinerama process (CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE, THIS IS CINERAMA, and WINDJAMMER).
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The category of Genre Films comprises lesser-known motion pictures that merit further consideration in the field of genre studies. These include GOW, THE HEADHUNTER and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, two American action-adventure films from the early 1930’s; both Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of KING KONG fame were involved in their production. Also featured are two film noir titles from the late 1940s, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott, and WOMAN ON THE RUN, shot on location in San Francisco. From Belgium, we offer 3 movies by the director/screenwriter husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Keil, who excelled at producing populist films about the Flemish culture.
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A series of restorations by the Danish Film Institute include important works by directors Carl Th. Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, as well as August Blom, Alfred Lind, and A.W. Sandberg. Other DVD editions feature Asta Nielsen, the first diva of international renown, as well as the romantic actor Valdemar Psilander. The 5 films by Carl Th. Dreyer (LEAVES OUT OF THE BOOK OF SATAN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL, ONCE UPON A TIME, and THE PRESIDENT) are particularly noteworthy, given the rarity of celluloid projections of these films in North America.
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Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video
Presents key works published by Index DVD from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
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NYU Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway, New York, NY Room 006
Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 2:00pm - 4:00pm
The NYU Aging Incubator presents a screening and Q&A with Tisch Professor, John Canemaker, celebrated animator and Academy Award winner, interviewed by Jon Gartenberg, renowned film curator and NYU Tisch Alum. Join us for a look at John’s animated short film, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, and a conversation that explores John’s personal perspective on aging.
The Moon and the Son - An Imagined Conversation (2005)
Academy Award and Emmy Award-winner (The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, 2005) John Canemaker heads the Animation program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he received a 2009 Distinguished Teaching Award. His films are in MoMA’s collection and distributed by Milestone Film. He has written twelve acclaimed animation history books, numerous articles for major periodicals, and curated exhibitions for Walt Disney Family Museum and Katonah Museum of Art. Canemaker received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award from ASIFA-Hollywood, and two residencies from the Rockefeller Foundation.His blog, John Canemaker’s Animated Eye, explores art, animation and performance.
John Canemaker
Jon Gartenberg has focused a significant part of his career on furthering the work and legacy of moving image artists. He acquired avant-garde films for the permanent collection at MOMA and programmed experimental films for the Tribeca Film Festival between 2003 and 2014. For the 2007 edition of the TFF, he organized a one-person tribute to John Canemaker. He has also spearheaded a comprehensive project to preserve, distribute, and curate international retrospectives of the films of Warren Sonbert. His company also distributes DVDs of experimental filmmakers to the university market in North America.
Jon Gartenberg
During the past decade, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) has been actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications from film archives and boutique publishers around the world, representing films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These premiere publications are made available by GME exclusively for institutional purchase by the university market in North America. We currently offer more than 150 publications that are noted here. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.
"Archival practices are undergoing reinvention, too, both enabled and blocked by opportunistic technologies. On the one hand, 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
DVD / Blu-ray Categories
The DVD and Blu-ray publications are arranged on our website under several broad categories as noted below, that are designed to facilitate themes for academic curricula and library acquisition.
◊
Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts
This very rich category of cutting-edge moving image works (both film and video art) encompasses films from four continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, and extend from classic films from the silent era to contemporary time-based media. Broadly speaking, the filmmakers in this category consciously play with narrative form and structure through a wide range of cinematic techniques and styles. Works featured include such diverse filmmakers as James Benning, Abigail Child, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas (US); Michael Snow (Canada); Nicholas Pereda (Mexico); Heinz Emigholz, Werner Schroeter, and Hans Richter (Germany); Germaine Dulac, Philippe Garrel, Marcel Hanoun, and Rose Lowder (France); Val del Omar (Spain); Dziga Vertov (USSR); Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan); and Apichatpoing Weerasethakul (Thailand). See also the category of Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video.
◊
This category encompasses a selection of DVD and Blu-ray publications of films directed by major artists from around the world: Georges Méliès, Abel Gance, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Louis Feuillade (France); F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Gerhard Lamprecht (Germany); Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Mikhail Kalatozov, and Dziga Vertov (USSR); Segundo de Chomón (Spain); and Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennett, King Vidor, and Allan Dwan (United States). These films star such screen idols as Asta Nielsen, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Alla Nazimova, Ivan Mosjoukine, Erich Von Stroheim, and Emil Jannings. See also the category of Danish Silent Cinema.
◊
Film History & Documentaries comprises important nonfiction films by Robert Flaherty (United States), Henri Storck (Belgium), Peter Von Bagh (Finland), and Henri Georges Clouzot (France). Technical developments throughout film history are represented by the DVD publication DISCOVERING CINEMA, a two-disc set of early sound and color experiments, as well as three films featuring the Cinerama process (CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE, THIS IS CINERAMA, and WINDJAMMER).
◊
The category of Genre Films comprises lesser-known motion pictures that merit further consideration in the field of genre studies. These include GOW, THE HEADHUNTER and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, two American action-adventure films from the early 1930’s; both Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of KING KONG fame were involved in their production. Also featured are two film noir titles from the late 1940s, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott, and WOMAN ON THE RUN, shot on location in San Francisco. From Belgium, we offer 3 movies by the director/screenwriter husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Keil, who excelled at producing populist films about the Flemish culture.
◊
A series of restorations by the Danish Film Institute include important works by directors Carl Th. Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, as well as August Blom, Alfred Lind, and A.W. Sandberg. Other DVD editions feature Asta Nielsen, the first diva of international renown, as well as the romantic actor Valdemar Psilander. The 5 films by Carl Th. Dreyer (LEAVES OUT OF THE BOOK OF SATAN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL, ONCE UPON A TIME, and THE PRESIDENT) are particularly noteworthy, given the rarity of celluloid projections of these films in North America.
◊
Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video
Presents key works published by Index DVD from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
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