September 2024 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues
/Today we recap the numerous screenings, events, and celebrations from September — in New York City and beyond — related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, GME President Jon Gartenberg collaborated with Elena Rossi-Snook to curate a program of films dealing with sex and censorship that screened at the New York Public Library. Additionally, a number of titles that GME distributes to North American universities appeared in screenings mounted by several noteworthy institutions last month, including the Harvard Film Archive, Metrograph, Light Industry, and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.
September 9th — Harvard Film Archive
On the occasion of the publication of FIGURES OF ABSENCE, the first monograph focusing on the film practice of the German artist Dore O., Harvard Film Archive honored the work and legacy of one of Germany’s most prolific yet overlooked experimental filmmakers. The program, which happened on Monday, September 9th, offered the rare chance to see the recently restored films by Dore O., many of which have bee inaccessible for years. GME distributes the collection FIGURES OF ABSENCE: THE FILMS OF DORE O. on DSL and as a Blu-Ray and DVD combo pack, in collaboration with Re:Voir Video. This collection includes three of the films that screened in the Harvard program: ALASKA (1968), LAWALE (1969), and KASKARA (1974).
September 12th — Metrograph
Beginning on September 12th, Metrograph mounted the series One More Time: The Cinema of Daniel Pommereulle, co-curated by Boris Bergmann and Armance Léger. Part of this series highlighted Pommereulle’s involvement with the Zanzibar Group, a countercultural filmmaking collective that emerged in France in the late 1960s. On September 15th, Metrograph screened Jackie Raynal’s DEUX FOIS (1968) in the program The Zanzibar Group: Jackie Raynal, along with Serge Bard’s ICI ET MAINTENANT and FUN AND GAMES FOR EVERYONE (both 1968) in the program The Zanzibar Group: Serge Bard and Olivier Mosset. Two days earlier, on the 13th, Pommereulle’s VITE (1969) was screened in the program Daniel Pommereulle x3. GME distributes the Raynal and Bard titles on DSL and DVD, with VITE included as a bonus feature on our DVD publication of ICI ET MAINTENANT. For the full list of Zanzibar titles GME offers, click here.
September 17th — Light Industry
On Tuesday, September 17th, Light Industry screened Valie Export’s 1977 sci-fi film INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES. Described in Light Industry’s program notes as a “landmark of ‘70s counter cinema” and both “conceptually dialectical and viscerally transgressive,” INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES remains one of Export’s best-known works. GME distributes INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES to North American universities as both a DVD and DVD/DSL bundle, in collaboration with Index Edition. We also distribute Export’s MANN & FRAU & ANIMAL (1970—73), …REMOTE…REMOTE… (1973), and SYNTAGMA (1984) on DVD and as a DVD/DSL bundle in the collection VALIE EXPORT: 3 EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILMS.
September 19th — New York Public Library
On Thursday, September 19th, at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, curator Jon Gartenberg, in collaboration with NYPL Film Collection Specialist Elena Rossi-Snook, presented a program of avant-garde films from the Library's Reserve Film and Video Collection dealing with sex and censorship. The program was titled Naughty Films at the Library: Avant-Garde Works in the Reverse Film and Video Collection. After the screening, Gartenberg and Rossi-Snook discussed the history and interpretation of these rarely-screened works. The films featured in the program were The Edison Company’s THE KISS (1896), Jean Genet’s UN CHANT D’AMOUR (1950), Stan Brakhage’s WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1959), Kenneth Anger’s KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965), Carolee Schneemann’s FUSES (1967), Bruce Conner’s MARILYN TIMES FIVE (1973), and Barbara Hammer’s DYKETACTICS (1974).
September 19th — GME
On September 19th, GME remembered legendary actor James Earl Jones with photographs taken by Hugh Bell, which capture Jones and his co-stars in the original off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s play The Blacks. Jones passed away on September 9th, 2024, at the age of 93. Hugh Bell was a renowned art and commercial photographer of Afro-Carribean descent who worked in New York City over the course of his entire professional career. GME exclusively represents the Bell photography collection for placement in a cultural institution, the organization of museum exhibitions, and the licensing of his photographs for documentary films and book publications.
September 21st — Light Industry
On Saturday, September 21st, from 6—9pm, Light Industry hosted a presentation of slides from the film oeuvre of legendary director Sergei Eisenstein. This presentation — which consisted of two carousels, looping continuously, with 60 chronologically-ordered slides each — was derived from the Paris-based magazine L’Avant-Scène du Cinéma. In the late 1960s, the magazine debuted a series of publications on major film directors with an unusual form: boxed sets of photographic slides, 120 per filmmaker, in cases designed like reference volumes. GME is proud to distribute three Eisenstein titles to the North American university market: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1926/1930), OCTOBER (1928), and OLD AND NEW (1929). BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and OCTOBER are distributed together, on DVD and as a DVD/DSL bundle. This deluxe two-disc set presents Eisenstein’s films in previously unreleased and painstakingly restored versions. OLD AND NEW is currently available in the eight-disc box set LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM, which includes an accompanying 28-page color booklet.
September 21st & 27th — The Film-Makers’ Cooperative & Public Art Fund
On Saturday, September 21st, and Friday, September 27th, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative collaborated with Public Art Fund to mount two Expanded Cinema presentations, titled No Swimsuit Required, in the drained Hamilton Fish Park Pool. These presentations consisted of three projectors (two 16mm, one digital) showing water-themed and eco-conscious films from the FMC’s collection on three different screens, accompanied by live sound artists. Among the filmmakers whose work was included in these events were Stan Brakhage, Ivan Galeta, and Friedl vom Gröller. GME distributes Brakhage’s ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT (1958) — whose rejection from Cinema 16 led to the creation of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in 1961 — as a DSL and on a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack. GME also distributes the collection OBSESSION: STRUCTURING TIME AND SPACE, a collection of six short films by Galeta spanning 1978 to 1989, in collaboration with Index Edition. SILENCE ON THE SCREEN is a collection of 19 films by Friedl vom Gröller (available on DVD and as a DSL/DVD bundle) that GME distributes in conjunction with a book of vom Gröller’s photographs titled ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH.
September 29th — GME
On September 29th, GME celebrated Silent Movie Day. Visit the Distribution section of our website and learn about the myriad International Silent Classics in our catalogue. (Due to the large number of titles, this category is split into two sections alphabetically: A—H and I—Z). Among the many silent era filmmakers represented in our collection are legends like Alfred Hitchcock, Abel Gance, F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Georges Méliès, Josef von Sternberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Marcel L’Herbier, and King Vidor. To purchase one or more of these titles, please visit our ordering page.
September 29th & 30th — Metrograph
On Sunday, September 29th, and Monday, September 30th, Metrograph screened Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “exquisite corpse” documentary-fiction hybrid film MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000), as part of their series Rabbit on the Moon. GME distributes MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON as a DVD and DSL/DVD bundle, which features three short films by Weerasethakul as bonus features.
September 30th — Light Industry
On Monday, September 30th, Light Industry invited scholar Craig Buckley to give a lecture related to his forthcoming book The Street and the Screen: Architectures of Spectatorship in the Age of Cinema, which explores the development of cinema architecture in the first half of the twentieth century, and “examines the significant urban, infrastructural, and social dimensions of screen practices by reconstructing the lives of buildings in five cities: Paris, Casablanca, Berlin, São Paulo, and New York.” The lecture, titled The Metropolis of Spectacle: Casablanca’s Cinema Architecture and the Colonial Public Sphere, “explores the screen scapes of colonial-era Casablanca” and “brings to light spaces that were at once key nodes within a culture of urban segregation as well as loci for acts of subversion and resistance.” A number of titles in GME’s vast collection of city symphony films are relevant to Buckley’s book and lecture, including Walther Ruttmann’s BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY and Leitão de Barros’ LISBOA, CRÓNICA ANEDÓTICA, both of which we distribute on DVD. Furthermore, GME President Jon Gartenberg has devoted a significant portion of his career to researching, programming, and writing about city symphony films.