“Sonbert’s most recent film refines the premises of his work over the past 15-odd years. His bravura-acrobatic camera and editing style of the ‘70s pale next to the seemingly effortless spectacle he produces today... The film is so dense it’s impossible to apprehend it at a single viewing… It is Sonbert’s darkest work.” —Amy Taubin, Village Voice
Read MoreIn Warren Sonbert's HONOR AND OBEY, soldiers march in formation, a tiger stalks through the snow, religious processions wind through the streets, and palm trees wave in a tropical breeze. As brightly colored images of authority figures blend into scenes of cocktail parties, this 21-minute silent film flows along with the grace of a musical score built on complex tensions hidden among notes.
Read MoreWarren Sonbert considered CARRIAGE TRADE (1973) his “magnum opus.” In this film, Sonbert interweaves footage taken from his journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films.
Read MoreELEGY IN THE STREETS was shot by filmmaker Jim Hubbard during the height of the Reagan Presidency, when both Reagan and his political administration ignored the deadly disease that afflicted an endless parade of human beings who ultimately died of AIDS. Hubbard’s film is replete with imagery associated with this era, including Gay Pride marches, candlelight vigils, ACT UP demonstrations, T-shirts embossed with bloody hands, cardboard headstones, police arrests, and the American flag hung upside down. As such, this movie can be viewed as a counterculture tract, a political protest film, an experimental documentary, and a diary film about Hubbard’s late partner and fellow filmmaker Roger Jacoby.
Read MoreFootage from 1964—1968 by Jonas Mekas that did not find its way into the WALDEN reels is joined in this classic period piece. Mostly centered in New York, IN BETWEEN includes travel footage and appearances by David Wise, Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Smith, Shirley Clarke, Jane Holzer, and more. Mel Lyman plays his banjo on the roof.
Read MoreWhen Andy Warhol refused to appear in public to accept the 1964 Film Culture magazines annual Independent Film Award, Jonas Mekas made this mock “documentary” of Warhol and a group of his superstars at the Factory. They are presented a basket of fruit which they then consume in slow motion.
Read MoreDuring their trip back to Lithuania, Jonas Mekas made REMINISCENES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, his brother Adolfas Mekas made GOING HOME in collaboration with his wife Pola Chapelle, and Chapelle herself made JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, which both Jonas and Adolfas said was the best of these three films.
Read MoreMade by Adolfas Mekas and Pola Chapelle, GOING HOME is about childhood memories, life's hardships, and the durability of families.
Read MoreHALLELUJAH THE HILLS, Adolfas’ debut feature film, was selected for the first New York Film Festival in 1963, was the hit of the 'Out-of-Competition' section at the Cannes Film Festival, and won the Silver Sail at Locarno. Referencing Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Maya Deren, Mekas' film is a work that bears witness to his knowledge and love of cinema, as well as the immense freedom to be found in the films of the New American Cinema.
Read MoreThe Diary Film was a significant form that has run throughout the history of American independent cinema, and whose major practitioner has been filmmaker Jonas Mekas. GME is therefore pleased to distribute HE STANDS IN A DESERT COUNTING THE SECONDS OF HIS LIFE as a DSL file to North American universities.
Read More"GUNS OF THE TREES deals with the thoughts, feelings, and anguished strivings of my generation, faced with the moral perplexity of our times. Conceived as an episodic, horizontal film, there is no apparent direct story connection between one scene and the next. The scenes act like pieces of a larger, timed, emotional mosaic. Where the direct word, or the direct image, fails — when we come to more essential things — the indirectness of the poet will seize the essence and the truth." —Jonas Mekas
Read More“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.” —Jonas Mekas
Read More"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. [The] same day, a smaller group gathered in a local hotel room to celebrate John's birthday." —Jonas Mekas
Read More"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
Read MoreIn SCENES FROM THE LIFE Of ANDY WARHOL: FRIENDSHIPS AND INTERSECTIONS, Jonas Mekas continues in his tradition of creating rapid-fire diary films, chronicling not only Andy Warhol, but also the social and cultural excitement that swirled around him, throbbing to a hypnotic Velvet Underground beat.
Read More“Jonas and Adolfas Mekas arrived in America in 1949 as displaced persons, former prisoners of German labor camps, exiled from their native Lithuanian farming village. Wanted by the Soviet police, they had been forced to leave home years earlier, not to return for 27 years. REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA is the compelling document of a divided family and their long-delayed reunion.” —Re:Voir Video
Read MoreIn LOST LOST LOST, Jonas Mekas compiles fourteen years of filming, starting from his arrival in America as a political refugee through the New York counterculture of the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Read MoreBased on the 1920 play of the same name by John Galsworthy, Alfred Hitchcock’s THE SKIN GAME is a fraught drama about two feuding families and the disastrous consequences of their rivalry.
Read MoreAlfred Hitchcock’s final silent film chronicles a dramatic love triangle on the Isle of Man, and is based on the popular 1894 novel THE MANXMAN by Hall Caine.
Read MoreAnother rare comedy in the Hitchcock canon, 1928’s CHAMPAGNE stars “Britain’s Queen of Happiness” Betty Balfour as a young woman forced to find employment after losing out on her father’s fortune.
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