ELEGY IN THE STREETS (US, 1989, Jim Hubbard)

ELEGY IN THE STREETS (US, 1989, Jim Hubbard)

ELEGY 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

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BATANG WEST SIDE (US, Philippines, 2001, Lav Diaz)

BATANG WEST SIDE (US, Philippines, 2001, Lav Diaz)

BATANG WEST SIDE, the first major epic in the oeuvre of Lav Diaz, is a powerful contemporary portrait of the Filipino diaspora in New York and New Jersey. GME distributes this title in a DVD and DSL bundle, now available (along with Diaz’s 2018 short THE BOY WHO CHOSE EARTH) from Edition-Filmmuseum.

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THE TENTH LEGION (US, 1967, Warren Sonbert)

THE TENTH LEGION (US, 1967, Warren Sonbert)

In 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.

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THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (US, 1967, Warren Sonbert)

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (US, 1967, Warren Sonbert)

One 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).

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Re:voir Collection

Re:voir Collection

GME 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.

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DORE O. - FIGURES OF ABSENCE

DORE O. - FIGURES OF ABSENCE

“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.”

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MARIE LOSIER - THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE / FELIX IN WONDERLAND

MARIE LOSIER - THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE / FELIX IN WONDERLAND

New 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.

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THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 1

THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 1

Jay 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.

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THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 2

THE FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT - VOLUME 2

“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.

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Austrian Avant-Garde Film and Video

Austrian Avant-Garde Film and Video

GME 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.

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Warren Sonbert Collection

Warren Sonbert Collection

Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) was one of the seminal figures working in American experimental film. He started making films in 1966 while a student at New York University, and before he was 20 years old, his first career retrospective drew the attention of the film critic for the commercial trade journal Variety, who wrote that “Probably not since Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls had its first showing at the Cinematheque... almost a year and a half ago has an ‘underground’ film event caused as much curiosity and interest in N.Y.’s non-under- ground world as did four days of showings of the complete films of Warren Sonbert at the Cinematheque’s new location on Wooster St.”

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AMPHETAMINE (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel)

AMPHETAMINE (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel)

“Sonbert began making films in 1966, as a student at New York University's film school in New York. In his first films, he uniquely captured the spirit of his generation, and was inspired both by his university milieu and by the denizens of the Warhol art scene. In both provocative and playful fashion, AMPHETAMINE depicts young men shooting amphetamines and making love in the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll.” - Jon Gartenberg

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WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? is an homage to the artistic and social milieu of New York City in the 1960s, as portrayed by the youthful protagonists in the film. Sonbert chronicles his friends and colleagues at the Janis and Castelli galleries, MOMA, Warhol’s Factory, the Bleecker Street Cinema, a rock concert, shopping, dancing, partying, and simply hanging out.

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HALL OF MIRRORS (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

HALL OF MIRRORS (US, 1966, Warren Sonbert)

“This film is an outgrowth of one of Sonbert's film classes at NYU, in which he was given outtakes from a Hollywood film photographed by Hal Mohr to re-edit into a narrative sequence. Adding to this found footage, Sonbert filmed Warhol's superstars Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga in more private and reflective moments.” - Jon Gartenberg

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The Projection Beam to the Digital Stream, From the Museum to the Internet

The Projection Beam to the Digital Stream, From the Museum to the Internet

Former, long-time curators in video and film at the Museum of Modern Art, Barbara London and GME President Jon Gartenberg discuss their journeys from the 1970s aspects of institutionalized media collection and exhibition, festival programming and the long road of transitions in media formats.

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Edition Filmmuseum

Edition Filmmuseum

GME presents key landmark silent, documentary and experimental works published by Edition Filmmuseum – Vienna, including films by James Benning, Martina Kudláček, and Josef von Sternberg (US), Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov (USSR), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), and others.

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Spanish and Latin American Avant-Garde Film and Animation

Spanish and Latin American Avant-Garde Film and Animation

GME presents key film and video work published by Cameo Media & Filmoteca de Catalunya covering experimental, avant-garde, animation, documentary and historical films from Spain and Latin America, including films by Val del Omar, Segundo de Chomón, and others who have made their mark in this area.

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GUNS (US, 1967, Robert Kramer)

GUNS (US, 1967, Robert Kramer)

Following a series of films questioning commitment and politics in America and culminating with MILESTONES 1975, and a 1977 documentary on Lisbon’s Carnation Revolution, SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN PORTUGAL, Robert Kramer moved to France with his family. The first film he made there was GUNS, an intricate feature which echoed the paranoid films of 1970’s Hollywood. With GUNS, Kramer continues his exploration of the militant psyche, while at the same time experimenting with different forms of narration.

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MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (Belgium, 1978, Boris Lehman)

MAGNUM BEGYNASIUM BRUXELLENSE (Belgium, 1978, Boris Lehman)

¨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

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HOTEL NEW YORK / NEW YORK STORY (US, 1984/1980, Jackie Raynal )

HOTEL NEW YORK / NEW YORK STORY (US, 1984/1980, Jackie Raynal )

HOTEL NEW YORK can be seen as a description of a fight; the fight of an immigrant with her new city and the fight of a filmmaker with her desire to make films within precarious boundaries. In Hotel New York Jackie Raynal plays and wins.”

-Cahiers du Cinéma

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