TONIGHT: Queer Avant-Garde Films Screen at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, co-curated by Jon Gartenberg and Elena Rossi-Snook

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TONIGHT: Queer Avant-Garde Films Screen at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, co-curated by Jon Gartenberg and Elena Rossi-Snook

Tonight, October 7th, at 5:30pm in the Bruno Walter Auditorium, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will screen experimental works from the Reserve Film and Video Collection that explores the history of queer filmmakers. The program, titled What’s Happening? Affirmations: A Celebration of the LGBTQ+ Gaze, includes 16mm prints from Jack Smith and Gregory Markopoulos as well as an important selection of films by women filmmakers (such as Barbara Hammer and Sadie Benning) and a seminal work by African-American artist Marlon Riggs.

This event is being held in recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month and is part of a larger series that looks at “deep cuts” from the Reserve Film and Video Collection's historic 16mm film and video holdings. Co-curated by GME President Jon Gartenberg and RFVC Film Collection Specialist Elena Rossi-Snook, this screening features films that carve out creative queer identities from an historically heteronormative society in celebratory fashion.

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AMPHETAMINE Ascending: Warren Sonbert's Groundbreaking Debut Finds New Life on Digital Platforms and in Academia

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AMPHETAMINE Ascending: Warren Sonbert's Groundbreaking Debut Finds New Life on Digital Platforms and in Academia

Gartenberg 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.

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June 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

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June 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

Today 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.

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March 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

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March 2025 Roundup Related to GME Titles, Artists, and Colleagues

Today we recap screenings, events, and celebrations from March related to GME titles, artists, and colleagues. Notably, GME celebrated Women’s History Month by spotlighting works by women filmmakers that we distribute on DSL, DVD, and Blu-Ray. In the Adrienne Mancia Streaming Room, GME streamed Hiroshi Teshigahara's WOMAN IN THE DUNES (which Mancia wrote about at length in Film Comment) and featured a number of rare archival treasures from Mancia's papers. Additionally, MIX NYC publicly shared the filmed Q&A session from their festival's closing night program in November 2024, which featured remarks from GME President Jon Gartenberg, commenting on GME associate Matt McKinzie's film and the other films in the program. At the end of the month, Gartenberg contributed program notes for Abigail Child's screening of her film THE SUBURBAN TRILOGY at the Film-Makers' Cooperative.

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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

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Watch an Excerpt from the Closing Night Q&A at MIX Fest 2024, Featuring GME President Jon Gartenberg and GME Associate Matt McKinzie

On November 23rd, 2024, QUEER DREAM TRIPTYCH, a found footage poem film by GME associate Matt McKinzie, screened at the Quad Cinema in the closing night program of MIX: The New York Queer Experimental Film Festival. The post-screening Q&A session with the filmmakers involved rich, cross-generational discourse pertaining to depictions of pleasure versus depictions of trauma, as related to queer identity and sexuality, in the selected films. This Q&A session was filmed and made available to the public on March 21st. GME President Jon Gartenberg, in attendance that evening with GME Fine Arts Curator David Deitch, commended the filmmakers for “externalizing their interior struggles on the screen,” praising their willingness to be “vulnerable” in their work and remarking that he found this kind of filmmaking — wherein the artists confronted their trauma in their art — to be “new and refreshing.”

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

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

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, 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’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.

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GME Presents A Selection of Photos Of Queer Celebrities By Jack Mitchell In Honor of LGBTQ+ History Month

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GME Presents A Selection of Photos Of Queer Celebrities By Jack Mitchell In Honor of LGBTQ+ History Month

Jack Mitchell (September 13th, 1925—November 7th, 2013) chronicled, over the course of his half-century professional career, a unique history of creators in the fields of dance, theater, music, the fine arts, film, and television. Within this impressive body of work exist images of celebrated individuals whose public and private lives represent a broad spectrum of queer identity.

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