Warren Sonbert's AMPHETAMINE Screens at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin June 7th-9th

A COLLAGE OF STILLS FROM WARREN SONBERT’S 1966 DEBUT FILM AMPHETAMINE, CO-DIRECTED WITH WENDY APPEL. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

From June 7th to 9th, Warren Sonbert’s debut film AMPHETAMINE (1966, co-directed with Wendy Appel) will screen 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.

As delineated on KW’s website:

Bultheel and Richards present newly produced music and film material, and place these into dialogue with poems, films, and scores by other artists—without subsuming any part into a uniform whole. As such, the artists offer a glimpse into the references and sources of inspiration and appreciation that have imprinted themselves on them. Situated in KW’s main hall, Workers in Song turns it into a musical Frankenstein, taking apart the seamless and unified apparatus of the cinema or chamber concert.

AMPHETAMINE is an important entry in Sonbert’s filmography for several reasons. Not only is it notable for its allusions to Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO; it is also groundbreaking for its portrayal of intimacy between gay men. Sonbert’s 360-degree shot of two men kissing each other was radical for the time, considering the film was made three years before the 1969 Stonewall uprising. AMPHETAMINE is also significant for its portrayal of drug use. Even in the transgressive world of underground cinema, it wasn’t common to see “preppy” young men injecting amphetamines with deadpan looks on their faces. Sonbert’s debut therefore perfectly fits into Bultheel and Richards’ exhibition, which is “replete with… quotidian pleasures such as online hook-ups, subcultures of bygone eras, and the darker dimensions of romantic subjectivity.”

AMPHETAMINE is currently available through GME as a DSL download for worldwide institutional rental or purchase.