GME Distributes Canonical Cinematic Works Prominently Featured in the Newly-Reopened MOMA Galleries
/The Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection has been reinstalled in radical fashion, opening up the narrative of modern art to incorporate film alongside the other fine arts, among them painting, drawing, and photography. GME distributes these canonical moving image works in DVD format exclusively for universities in North America. Our objective is to facilitate the incorporation of these important movies into the academic teaching curricula and to further their appreciation as significant artistic achievements.
The collage of still images and film excerpts below illustrate the array of cutting-edge masterworks --documentaries, narratives, and avant-garde movies from the 1920’s through the 1940’s -- that are currently on display in MOMA’s galleries. They include films by Helen Levitt (IN THE STREET), Germaine Dulac (THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN), Hans Richter (RHYTHMUS 21), Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler (MANHATTA), Maya Deren (A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA), Walther Ruttmann (BERLIN, SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY) , Dziga Vertov (THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA and ENTHUSIASM).
MANHATTA (1921)
ENTHUSIASM (1930)
IN THE STREET (1948)
Concurrently, the Department of Film has inaugurated an array of screening series in MOMA’s film theaters, highlighting additional films from the museum’s permanent collection. In Currents, these films comprise works from the late 1960’s through the 1980’s which were previously shown in MOMA’s Cineprobe series, featuring the artists’ presence alongside their recently-completed, contemporary avant-garde and independent films. GME President Jon Gartenberg, who worked as a curator in MOMA’s film archive for nearly two decades, was engaged in the acquisition and archiving of a number of these movies for MOMA’s permanent collection. Now working in the digital era, GME is proud to offer these museum-quality films to educational institutions in DVD and Blu-ray formats.
These films include Peter Emmanuel Goldman’s WHEEL OF ASHES, Jonas Mekas’s LOST LOST LOST, N:O:T:H:I:N:G by Paul Sharits, ONE (FLUXFILM NO. 14) by Yoko Ono, MY NAME IS OONA and FOG PUMAS by Gunvor Nelson, as well as films by Austrian filmmakers Valie Export and Kurt Kren, and Peter Kubelka, and American artists James Benning, Stan Brakhage and Tony Conrad.
In addition, MOMA is showcasing in its film theaters classic silent films from its permanent collection, which are also distributed on DVD by GME. These masterworks include films starring Asta Nielsen, as well as movies directed by Josef Von Sternberg and Paul Leni.
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Jon Gartenberg, GME PResident and Juan Manuel Dominguez, bafici programmer in front of an extremely rare poster from METROPOLIS (1927)