“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 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 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 More¨A living chronicle of the residents of the Béguinage neighborhood – so named because it is situated on the site of the former Brussels béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night.¨
-Boris Lehman
Adolfas and Jonas Mekas arrived in New York in 1949, leaving their native land, Lithuania, behind, caught between Nazi and Soviet occupation. Little by little the camera became their means of expression and cinema invaded their lives. 27 years passed before they could finally return to Lithuania. This is the odyssey the three films intertwiningly recall: Adolfas and Jonas Mekas and Pola Chapelle (Adolfas'ʼwife) are at once actor and filmer. The Mekas brothers rediscover their country and family with their changes, while Pola Chapelle is the external gaze embracing this reunion. Neither Lithuanian nor New Yorkers, where is their home now? As Jonas likes to say “My Country is Cinema.”
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