GME News
Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to announce our distribution of the films of Pierre Clémenti as new 2K digital restorations to North American academic institutions.
Though best known as an actor, Clémenti's directorial work constitutes a fascinating and long overlooked chapter in 1960s avant-garde film history. To inquire about the institutional acquisition of Clémenti's films, click here.
Warren Sonbert (1947—1995) was one of the seminal figures working in American experimental film. His early films — from 1966’s AMPHETAMINE through to 1973’s CARRIAGE TRADE — are currently available from GME on an exclusive basis as new 2K digital restorations for acquisition by universities, museums, and other cultural institutions worldwide.
Read MoreShot before, during and after 9/11, Steve Bilich's experimental short documentary Native New Yorker took several years of filming with a 1924 hand-cranked Cine-Kodak camera. It follows Shaman Trail Scout 'Coyote' as he takes a journey that transcends time, from Inwood Park (where the island was traded for beads and booze), down a native trail (now “Broadway”), and into lower Manhattan (a sacred burial ground, now including the newest natives of this island empire). 24 years since the 9/11 attacks, Bilich's film remains as powerful and relevant as ever.
Read MoreOver the past several months, GME has paid homage to Adrienne Mancia by showcasing films in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room that she championed throughout her prolific career as a film exhibitor and curator. We now turn our focus to one of our company’s major projects: the excavation of libraries of celluloid films that have been abandoned in warehouses which GME has subsequently repatriated to archives for preservation and exhibition. For lighter, end-of-summer fare, we present Leopold Lindtberg's SWISS TOUR (1949) — a project that cuts across the various facets and activities of our company, including film archiving, distribution, and exhibition.
Read MoreFrom July 30th to August 5th, The Museum of Modern Art will present its third annual Silent Movie Week. This year’s programming is comprised of seven recent silent film restorations screened over seven consecutive evenings. MoMA’s week-long celebration commences with the Museum’s digital restoration of Walther Ruttmann’s BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A CITY (1927), which will be shown with live musical accompaniment in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. GME distributes BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A CITY to North American universities as a DVD publication that also includes Ruttmann’s 1929 feature MELODY OF THE WORLD, and 12 short films by Ruttmann as bonus features. Also included in this release are a selection of Ruttmann’s paintings and drawings, lobby cards and original artwork for BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A CITY, and an 86-minute long radio feature from 1987 about Ruttmann’s life and career.
Read MoreTomorrow, July 5th, at 5pm, Jim McBride’s controversial 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 French New Wave classic BREATHLESS screens at the Roxy Cinema in Tribeca. McBride co-wrote the screenplay for BREATHLESS with L.M. Kit Carson, who starred in McBride’s feature directorial debut, the groundbreaking 1967 “mockumentary” DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY. Adrienne Mancia, a longtime friend and colleague of GME President Jon Gartenberg, championed McBride’s debut during her time as a curator in the The Museum of Modern Art’s film department, wherein she redefined the field of film programming by showcasing new and innovative works by emerging artists.
DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY streams this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room. Click here to view McBride’s film and read an excerpt from Gartenberg’s program note about DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, written for the occasion of the film’s inclusion in MoMA’s 2023 Adrienne Mancia tribute.
Read MoreGartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to announce the release of a new digital restoration of Warren Sonbert’s groundbreaking debut film AMPHETAMINE (1966), which is currently available for institutional sale and clip licensing through GME. The film is also available for rental on a digital format through The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, where Sonbert originally distributed his early films on 16mm. This digital restoration of AMPHETAMINE, which theatrically premiered at Metrograph in New York City on June 8th, 2025, follows a period of renewed scholarly interest in Sonbert’s debut film. Namely, Dr. Maurice Nagington’s 2025 publication The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach (Routledge), Juan Suarez’s 2024 book Experimental Film and Queer Materiality (Oxford University Press), and GME associate Matt McKinzie's 2024 film program The Motown Sound and the Queer Underground (presented by Spectacle Theater and The Film-Makers' Cooperative), invoke AMPHETAMINE as a key filmic text integral to discourse surrounding 1960s avant-garde cinema, queer representation on film, popular music, chemsex, and connection.
Read MoreOn June 4, 2025, it was announced that Kino Lorber had acquired the U.S. distribution rights to Lisa D’Apolito’s SHARI & LAMB CHOP, a documentary about trailblazing children’s entertainer Shari Lewis and her anthropomorphic sock puppet Lamb Chop. For this documentary, GME licensed Raimondo Borea’s photograph of Lewis and Lamb Chop appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the mid-1960s. D’Apolito’s film will be theatrically released by Kino Lorber tomorrow, July 18th, 2025, followed by a digital, educational, and home video release. GME distributes a number of films from Kino Lorber’s library to North American academic institutions. To read a complete list of Kino Lorber titles we currently offer on DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital formats, click here.
Read MoreToday we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from June related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, GME publicly presented the World Premiere digital restorations of a selection of the early films of Warren Sonbert at Metrograph on June 8th. GME also attended the 2025 Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards, which honored two of our longtime friends and colleaugues: Jim Hubbard and James Wentzy. Furthermore, GME screened Allan King’s groundbreaking documentary WARRENDALE this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room.
Read MoreJim McBride’s DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (1967), which streams this month in the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, is widely regarded as one of the first “mockumentaries,” and was once described by eminent film critic Richard Brody as an “ingenious, scruffy metafiction… an exotic fruit grown in New York from the seed of the French New Wave.” Filmed on a shoestring budget over the course of several days, it is a work of experimental fiction presented as an autobiographical documentary about aspiring filmmaker David Holzman (played by L.M. Kit Carson), who decides to make a filmed diary of his life on the Upper West Side.
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