Footage 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 MoreIn THE TENTH LEGION, Sonbert presents his college age friends at work and play, wandering the streets of NYC, lounging, shopping, and posing for the camera. The film stylistically exemplifies Sonbert’s masterful use of a constantly moving hand-held camera as it trails the teenage protagonists in choreographed fashion, and of chiaroscuro lighting effects in interior scenes.
Read MoreOne of the most profound themes coursing through Sonbert’s work is that of love between couples in all its pitfalls and perfect moments. To express this theme, Sonbert employed diverse cinematic strategies. These include in-camera editing (in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL,1967), twin-screen effects (in two “lost” films -- CONNECTION and TED AND JESSICA -- also both from 1967), and montage sequences (beginning with TUXEDO THEATRE, 1969).
Read MoreGME presents key works published by RE:VOIR, a label that publishes and distributes classic and contemporary experimental cinema including films from the Dadaist, Surrealist and Letterist movements, films from the American avant-garde, diary films, arthouse features, animated works and hand-painted films.
Read More“Being located in the “antechamber of language, even of consciousness,” her newly restored films occupy a state of in-betweenness that cannot be easily interpreted nor approached verbally. Their associative stream of images and sounds acts as a deliberation on their sensuality. In a dream-like density and strange suspension of time, O.’s films induce a heightened sense of perception between hypnosis and clarity.”
Read MoreNew York filmmaker born in Paris, Marie Losier begins filming, with portraits of people she met in New York, documenting their lives from what she sees and what she feels after many years in theater and painting which had a great influence on her. Then she uses her imagination to represent these characters or situations as in a tableau vivant. Always with the materiality of the film which requires a certain way of working, her cinema develops a mystery, a magical moment.
Read MoreJay Rosenblatt is a master practitioner of found footage filmmaking. Working since the 1980s, Rosenblatt’s films uniquely deal with the human condition – incorporating the passage of time, birth and childhood, the experience of personal, family and community space, religious faith and tyranny, mortality and death, and the function of memory in evoking emotional states. Rosenblatt’s films are psychologically gripping, often bringing the spectator to the darker places of the human experience, including fear and anxiety, loss, grief, and mourning.
Read More“Jay Rosenblatt makes short, pointed, poetic films, and to see a collection of his work is to know he's a major artist. His specialness has no single source. He's a master at matching music and image, and the nature of his work, which usually involves discovering and using found footage, requires profound patience. Yet mostly, I suspect, what makes almost every Jay Rosenblatt film a full emotional experience is his empathy, his deep, unfeigned and unmistakable respect for life in its many forms.” - Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle.
Read MoreGME presents key works published by INDEX Edition from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Dieter Brehm, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
Read MoreFilmed with a 1924 hand-crank Cine-Kodak camera, Shaman Trail Scout 'Coyote' takes a journey which transcends time, from Inwood Park (where the island was traded for beads and booze), down a native trail (now 'Broadway'), into lower Manhattan (sacred burial ground, now including the newest natives of this island empire). Shot before, during and after 9/11, 'Native New Yorker' took several years of filming, with a running length of 13 minutes. Original score composed by William Susman.
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