June 2024 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues
/Happy Summer from Gartenberg Media Enterprises! Today we reflect on screenings, events, and celebrations from June, in New York City and beyond, related to GME’s multifaceted projects. Notably, a suite of films by Warren Sonbert, whose body of work and legacy GME represents, played at the National Gallery of Art, while several films by Alexander Kluge, whose work GME distributes to the North American University market, were shown at e-Flux Screening Room as part of an extensive, week-long retrospective.
STILL: WARREN SONBERT AND WENDY APPEL’S AMPHETAMINE (1966). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
June 7th — KW Institute of Contemporary Art
From June 7th to 9th, Warren Sonbert’s debut film AMPHETAMINE (1966, co-directed with Wendy Appel) screened in Berlin at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art, as part of Billy Bultheel and James Richards’ multimedia exhibition Workers in Song. Bultheel and Richards’ show premiered at WIELS last year, and was co-commissioned by WIELS, Batalha Centro de Cinema, Mudam Luxembourg — Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, and the KW Institute.
OFFICIAL POSTER FOR “FROM WEST AND EAST: CANYON CINEMA MEETS THE COOP.” SOURCE: THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOPERATIVE.
June 7th — The Film-Makers’ Cooperative
On June 7th, experimental filmmaker and former Executive Director of Canyon Cinema, Dominic Angerame, presented a program of eight films catalogued by both Canyon and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, titled From West and East: Canyon Cinema Meets the Coop. Scholar and educator Kornelia Boczkowska co-curated the program with Angerame, which features two of Angerame’s recent films: LUMINAE (2023) and AEON (2024). GME is proud to distribute nine of Angerame’s city symphony films in the collection CITYSCAPES, which is available to the North American university market as both a DVD and DSL.
WARREN SONBERT FILMING WITH A 16mm BOLEX CAMERA. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
June 8th — National Gallery of Art
A series of films by Warren Sonbert, curated and presented by GME President Jon Gartenberg, screened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. from June 8th to 9th as part of the museum’s annual Pride Month event We Have Always Been Here. Gartenberg adapted these Sonbert programs from the Sonbert retrospective that screened at The Museum of Modern Art in May of last year.
FILMMAKER ALEXANDER KLUGE. SOURCE: SENSES OF CINEMA.
June 13th — e-Flux Screening Room
On June 13th, 15th, and 18th, e-Flux Screening Room in NYC mounted the series Phoenix Cinema: Meeting with Alexander Kluge, which took place in-person, in four parts, at e-Flux, and in six parts online through July 17th. GME distributes Kluge’s features YESTERDAY’S GIRL (1966) and PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973) on a DVD publication with Edition Filmmuseum that includes five of the German artist’s short films as bonus features: BRUTALITY IN STONE (1961), TEACHERS (1963), AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE, AN VERTOV (both 1998), and SAM REMEMBERS PAPA KONG (2006). Kluge’s participation in the Oberhausen Manifesto is also represented in our library, with his 1961 film BRUTALITÄT IN STEIN (a collaboration with filmmaker Peter Schamoni) included in the 2-disc DVD publication THE OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO.
MONSIGNOR JOHN PATRICK CARROLL-ABBING, IN CONVERSATION WITH A GROUP OF BOYS IN BOYS’ TOWN OF ITALY, CIRCA EARLY 1950s. © THE ESTATE OF RAIMONDO BOREA.
June 14th — Film Forum
From Friday, June 14th, through Thursday, June 27th, Vittorio De Sica’s SHOESHINE (1946) played at Film Forum in a new 4K restoration by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with Orium S.A. Restoration. An essential piece of Italian neorealist cinema, De Sica’s SHOESHINE is an ideal filmic complement to an indelible suite of images taken by Raimondo Borea, which documented the Boys’ Town of Italy in the early 1950s. Boys’ Town of Italy was a community created by Monsignor John Patrick Carroll-Abbing, an Irish priest working at the Vatican who witnessed the plights of homeless and orphaned children in Rome in the wake of World War II. Like Borea’s photo essay, De Sica’s film chronicles the struggles of homeless and orphaned children in Italy after the war, many of whom resorted to stealing, panhandling, and shining shoes to survive. GME is proud to represent Borea’s body of work for licensing and exhibition.