Warren Sonbert Retrospective at the National Gallery of Art June 8th-9th

FILMMAKER WARREN SONBERT. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

WARREN SONBERT’S AMPHETAMINE (1966). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

A series of films by Warren Sonbert, curated and presented by GME President Jon Gartenberg, will screen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in June 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 played at The Museum of Modern Art in May of last year. Sonbert’s Estate has previously named GME as the custodian of his legacy, and since the artist’s untimely passing, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute, and curate career retrospectives of his films on an international basis, as well as publish original documents from the paper archive of his writings.

On Saturday, June 8th, at 2pm, Sonbert’s films WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (1966), HALL OF MIRRORS (1966), and THE TENTH LEGION (1967) will play in the program Sonbert’s Whirl Through Warhol’s World. These films showcase Sonbert’s experiences within and among the “denizens” of Andy Warhol’s Factory Scene (including Gerard Malanga and Rene Ricard) in New York in the mid-1960s, as captured by his “constantly-moving, handheld camera.” Directly following is the program Queer Identity. This lineup begins with Sonbert’s first film AMPHETAMINE (1966), co-directed with Wendy Appel, which was groundbreaking for featuring a 360-degree shot of two men embracing, a la the kiss scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. The program also features later works of Sonbert’s made just prior to, and during, the AIDS epidemic. NOBLESSE OBLIGE (1981) deals with the riots in San Francisco following the murder of openly gay politician Harvey Milk, and in its visual motifs is modeled after Douglas Sirk’s TARNISHED ANGELS. SHORT FUSE (1992) is an emotive expression of Sonbert’s anger made shortly following his AIDS diagnosis, while WHIPLASH (1995/97), Sonbert’s elegiac meditation on his own mortality, was finalized after his death by his former student, filmmaker Jeff Scher. This program ends with Scher’s three-minute portrait of Sonbert, WARREN (1993), described by Gartenberg as “an intimate dialogue between friends, as well as a battle of directorial wills,” made not long after Scher learned of Sonbert’s diagnosis.

WARREN SONBERT’S THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1966). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

On Sunday, June 9th, at 2pm, Sonbert’s films THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1967) and TUXEDO THEATRE (1969) will play in the program From Mise-en-Scène to Montage, which highlights the themes of love between couples and travel, expressed via both in-camera edits and montage techniques. This program also ends with a film by Scher, POSTCARDS FROM WARREN (2015), which is a dynamic montage of many postcards Sonbert sent to Scher. Directly after, the fourth and final program Poetics emphasizes Sonbert’s polyvalent montage filmmaking practice and its influence upon the avant-garde Language poets. Sonbert’s DIVIDED LOYALTIES (1978) and A WOMAN’S TOUCH (1983, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s MARNIE) play alongside Abigail Child’s SURFACE NOISE (2000), which is her found footage homage to Sonbert’s cinematic style.