Two Warren Sonbert Films Screen in "The Motown Sound and the Queer Underground," curated by GME associate Matt McKinzie

OFFICIAL POSTER FOR “THE MOTOWN SOUND AND THE QUEER UNDERGROUND,” DESIGNED BY MATT MCKINZIE AND FEATURING STILLS FROM WARREN SONBERT’S AMPHETAMINE (1966). SOURCE: MATT MCKINZIE, THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOPERATIVE.

On Friday, August 30th, at 7:30pm, Warren Sonbert’s first two films AMPHETAMINE (1966) and WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (1966) will screen at Spectacle Theater (124 S. 3rd St.) in the program The Motown Sound and the Queer Underground. This program is curated by GME associate Matt McKinzie as part of the series Sonic Visions: Experiments in Cinema and Music, presented by the Film-Makers’ Cooperative. Sonbert, who began making experimental films as a teenager, was one of the seminal figures of the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s. As the custodian of his legacy, 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, which are now housed at Harvard University. A selection of Sonbert’s writings were reprinted in a special issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, for which GME President Jon Gartenberg served as Guest Editor.

Sonbert’s films are accompanied in McKinzie’s program by three additional 1960s avant-garde shorts from the collection of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative: Nikolai Ursin’s BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN (1966—67), Edward Owens’ REMEMBRANCE: A PORTRAIT STUDY (1967), and José Rodríguez-Soltero’s LUPE (1966). All of these films were made by artists from within the LGBTQ+ community, and pair Motown (and Motown-inspired) music with queer (and queer-coded) imagery. As explicated in McKinzie’s program notes:

In all of these films (notably made in 1966–7, the “banner year” for American pop music), the “Motown sound” underscores moments of joy, catharsis, pleasure, and/or transformation experienced by queer and trans folk — often queer, trans, and/or gender-nonconforming folks of color. This lineup thereby aims to challenge the reputation of sociopolitical neutrality associated with the “Motown sound”: presenting its significance in the lives and art of these marginalized communities, while affirming its place in the tradition of pop music in 1960s queer underground cinema at large.

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

Regarding the use of Motown music in Sonbert’s AMPHETAMINE specifically, which opens this program, McKinzie writes:

AMPHETAMINE… a collaboration with Wendy Appel (future member of the guerilla filmmaking collective TVTV)… [is a] 10-minute experimental short [that] begins with the Supremes’ 1964 album Where Did Our Love Go? playing on a turntable. Over the sounds of that LP’s title track, “Baby Love,” and “I Hear a Symphony,” an intoxicating mélange of homoerotic images unfold: preppy young gay men lounge, canoodle shirtless, take intravenous drugs, and passionately kiss each other… Here, Motown’s best-selling group becomes the de facto Greek chorus of a euphoric night of gay passion, their reputation of “apoliticism” complicated by the transgressive and liberating imagery with which the filmmakers have fused them. Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard’s sumptuous harmonizing seems to elucidate the chemical high the men on screen are experiencing; Sonbert’s visuals imbue that harmonizing with new, queerer meaning in return.

STILL: WARREN SONBERT'S WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? (1966). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

McKinzie also notes the use of Motown-inspired music in Sonbert’s next film, WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO?:

Sonbert’s follow-up WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? is titled after the Supremes’ song and album of the same name. In it, the young gay filmmaker follows his friends (many of them involved with Andy Warhol’s factory scene, and some of whom appeared in AMPHETAMINE) around New York City: at gallery exhibitions, and in artist lofts, studios, and storefronts. His colorful images of camaraderie and creativity (including footage captured within Warhol’s studio) are accented by moments of eroticism and humor (a close-up of a painting of a nipple at an art show, for example) and accompanied, notably, by the Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”. The Shirelles were considered major forerunners and contemporaries of the girl groups that came out of Motown, and Sonbert flanks their classic number with a cluster of contemporaneous Motown-adjacent hits (namely the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”; producer Phil Spector credited Berry Gordy and “the Motown sound” as an influence on his own “Wall of Sound” production). The result is a kind of extended music video in which Sonbert reflects the zeitgeist of his community and the times; a queer-coded love letter to friendship and the mid-‘60s downtown art scene, named for one of the Supremes’ biggest singles (and LPs) and enlivened by artists who both influenced and echoed the “Motown sound.”

Originally shot on 16mm, new digital transfers of AMPHETAMINE and WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? will screen in this program. Click here for tickets and McKinzie’s program notes in full.