GME News
Jonas Mekas on his film THIS SIDE OF PARADISE (1999): "I had the fortune to spend some time, mostly during the summers, with Jackie Kennedy's and her sister Lee Radziwill's families and children. Cinema was an integral, inseparable, as a matter of fact, a key part of our friendship."
Read MoreIn a moving video letter to curator John Hanhardt, LETTER TO JOHN FROM JONAS (1999), in which he stresses the need for Anthology Film Archives to resist the option of merging with the Guggenheim Museum, Jonas Mekas discusses the shift away from Anthology's role as the sole preservationist of experimental cinema, and, by example, the important work of Jon Gartenberg’s preservation of Warren Sonbert’s estate following Sonbert’s untimely death in 1995.
Read MoreWith the release of these DVD editions (published by Re:Voir), GME pays tribute to Jonas Mekas (1922-2019), who led a remarkable life both as the Godfather of avant-garde cinema as well as the signature artist who propelled the film diary into new dimensions of time, space, and memory.
Read MoreJeff Preiss was inspired by the diary films of Jonas Mekas and Warren Sonbert (who was his teacher at Bard College). He began in the early 1980s making silent, semi-narrative works born out of his practice of shooting with his Regular 8mm Bolex on a daily basis.
Read MoreWe experienced an incredibly moving tribute to Jonas Mekas last night at City Winery.
Read MoreWe are very saddened to learn of the passing of Jonas Mekas, a towering emblem of avant-garde culture.
Read MoreDuring the past decade, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) has been actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications from film archives and boutique publishers around the world, representing films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These premiere publications are made available by GME exclusively for institutional purchase by the university market in North America. We currently offer more than 150 publications that are noted here. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.
"Archival practices are undergoing reinvention, too, both enabled and blocked by opportunistic technologies. On the one hand, the superb dedication of such entities as the Criterion Collection, Milestone Films, and Gartenberg Media Enterprises, to name key players, are making possible access to a wealth of cinematic history, ephemera, and value-added materials."
– B. Ruby Rich, Film Quarterly
DVD / Blu-ray Categories
The DVD and Blu-ray publications are arranged on our website under several broad categories as noted below, that are designed to facilitate themes for academic curricula and library acquisition.
◊
Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts
This very rich category of cutting-edge moving image works (both film and video art) encompasses films from four continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, and extend from classic films from the silent era to contemporary time-based media. Broadly speaking, the filmmakers in this category consciously play with narrative form and structure through a wide range of cinematic techniques and styles. Works featured include such diverse filmmakers as James Benning, Abigail Child, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas (US); Michael Snow (Canada); Nicholas Pereda (Mexico); Heinz Emigholz, Werner Schroeter, and Hans Richter (Germany); Germaine Dulac, Philippe Garrel, Marcel Hanoun, and Rose Lowder (France); Val del Omar (Spain); Dziga Vertov (USSR); Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan); and Apichatpoing Weerasethakul (Thailand). See also the category of Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video.
◊
This category encompasses a selection of DVD and Blu-ray publications of films directed by major artists from around the world: Georges Méliès, Abel Gance, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Louis Feuillade (France); F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Gerhard Lamprecht (Germany); Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Mikhail Kalatozov, and Dziga Vertov (USSR); Segundo de Chomón (Spain); and Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennett, King Vidor, and Allan Dwan (United States). These films star such screen idols as Asta Nielsen, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Alla Nazimova, Ivan Mosjoukine, Erich Von Stroheim, and Emil Jannings. See also the category of Danish Silent Cinema.
◊
Film History & Documentaries comprises important nonfiction films by Robert Flaherty (United States), Henri Storck (Belgium), Peter Von Bagh (Finland), and Henri Georges Clouzot (France). Technical developments throughout film history are represented by the DVD publication DISCOVERING CINEMA, a two-disc set of early sound and color experiments, as well as three films featuring the Cinerama process (CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE, THIS IS CINERAMA, and WINDJAMMER).
◊
The category of Genre Films comprises lesser-known motion pictures that merit further consideration in the field of genre studies. These include GOW, THE HEADHUNTER and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, two American action-adventure films from the early 1930’s; both Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of KING KONG fame were involved in their production. Also featured are two film noir titles from the late 1940s, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott, and WOMAN ON THE RUN, shot on location in San Francisco. From Belgium, we offer 3 movies by the director/screenwriter husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Keil, who excelled at producing populist films about the Flemish culture.
◊
A series of restorations by the Danish Film Institute include important works by directors Carl Th. Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, as well as August Blom, Alfred Lind, and A.W. Sandberg. Other DVD editions feature Asta Nielsen, the first diva of international renown, as well as the romantic actor Valdemar Psilander. The 5 films by Carl Th. Dreyer (LEAVES OUT OF THE BOOK OF SATAN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL, ONCE UPON A TIME, and THE PRESIDENT) are particularly noteworthy, given the rarity of celluloid projections of these films in North America.
◊
Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video
Presents key works published by Index DVD from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
◊◊◊
During the past decade, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) has been actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications from film archives and boutique publishers around the world, representing films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These premiere publications are made available by GME exclusively for institutional purchase by the university market in North America. We currently offer more than 150 publications that are noted here. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.
"Archival practices are undergoing reinvention, too, both enabled and blocked by opportunistic technologies. On the one hand, the superb dedication of such entities as the Criterion Collection, Milestone Films, and Gartenberg Media Enterprises, to name key players, are making possible access to a wealth of cinematic history, ephemera, and value-added materials."
– B. Ruby Rich, Film Quarterly
DVD / Blu-ray Categories
The DVD and Blu-ray publications are arranged on our website under several broad categories as noted below, that are designed to facilitate themes for academic curricula and library acquisition.
◊
Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts
This very rich category of cutting-edge moving image works (both film and video art) encompasses films from four continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, and extend from classic films from the silent era to contemporary time-based media. Broadly speaking, the filmmakers in this category consciously play with narrative form and structure through a wide range of cinematic techniques and styles. Works featured include such diverse filmmakers as James Benning, Abigail Child, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas (US); Michael Snow (Canada); Nicholas Pereda (Mexico); Heinz Emigholz, Werner Schroeter, and Hans Richter (Germany); Germaine Dulac, Philippe Garrel, Marcel Hanoun, and Rose Lowder (France); Val del Omar (Spain); Dziga Vertov (USSR); Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan); and Apichatpoing Weerasethakul (Thailand). See also the category of Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video.
◊
This category encompasses a selection of DVD and Blu-ray publications of films directed by major artists from around the world: Georges Méliès, Abel Gance, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Louis Feuillade (France); F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Gerhard Lamprecht (Germany); Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Mikhail Kalatozov, and Dziga Vertov (USSR); Segundo de Chomón (Spain); and Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennett, King Vidor, and Allan Dwan (United States). These films star such screen idols as Asta Nielsen, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Alla Nazimova, Ivan Mosjoukine, Erich Von Stroheim, and Emil Jannings. See also the category of Danish Silent Cinema.
◊
Film History & Documentaries comprises important nonfiction films by Robert Flaherty (United States), Henri Storck (Belgium), Peter Von Bagh (Finland), and Henri Georges Clouzot (France). Technical developments throughout film history are represented by the DVD publication DISCOVERING CINEMA, a two-disc set of early sound and color experiments, as well as three films featuring the Cinerama process (CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE, THIS IS CINERAMA, and WINDJAMMER).
◊
The category of Genre Films comprises lesser-known motion pictures that merit further consideration in the field of genre studies. These include GOW, THE HEADHUNTER and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, two American action-adventure films from the early 1930’s; both Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of KING KONG fame were involved in their production. Also featured are two film noir titles from the late 1940s, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott, and WOMAN ON THE RUN, shot on location in San Francisco. From Belgium, we offer 3 movies by the director/screenwriter husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Keil, who excelled at producing populist films about the Flemish culture.
◊
A series of restorations by the Danish Film Institute include important works by directors Carl Th. Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, as well as August Blom, Alfred Lind, and A.W. Sandberg. Other DVD editions feature Asta Nielsen, the first diva of international renown, as well as the romantic actor Valdemar Psilander. The 5 films by Carl Th. Dreyer (LEAVES OUT OF THE BOOK OF SATAN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL, ONCE UPON A TIME, and THE PRESIDENT) are particularly noteworthy, given the rarity of celluloid projections of these films in North America.
◊
Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video
Presents key works published by Index DVD from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
◊◊◊
Watch for our upcoming spring releases!
The Diary Film was a significant form that has run throughout the history of American independent cinema, and whose major practitioner has been filmmaker Jonas Mekas. GME is therefore pleased to add HE STANDS IN A DESERT COUNTING THE SECONDS OF HIS LIFE to other boxed set editions of Mekas’s other diary films THE MAJOR WORKS and THE SIXITES QUARTET. Shot between 1969 and 1985, the film consists of 124 brief sketches, each half-a-minute to about two minutes long. According to Mekas, these are “Portraits of people I have spent time with, places, seasons of the year, weather (storms, snow, blizzards etc...) many of my film-maker friends- streets and parks of New-York- brief escape in nature, out of town- nothing spectacular, unimportant celebrations of life that has gone, by now, and remains only as a record in these personal, brief sketches."
◊
GME is proud to expand its international offerings to include Israeli cinema. We herewith release David Perlov’s DIARY as a complement to the aforementioned movies by Jonas Mekas. Perlov had worked in Paris with the great documentarist, Joris Ivens, and he brought to Israeli film the personal, experimental tradition of the documentary cinema. According to Uri Klein (writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz):
"At the center of Perlov’s work is the gaze:…the gaze through the window of Perlov’s house, which gave rise to his most important work, and the most important film in the history of Israeli cinema, DIARY; his gaze at the surroundings close to his home in Tel Aviv, and his recurring gaze at Paris, where he spent a few years in the 1950s, and at Sao Paolo, the city in which he grew up, in his native land, Brazil. This was the genesis of the six chapters of DIARY, each an hour long, which were filmed in the course of the decade that followed.
Over the years, through the totality of his work, David Perlov’s gaze became our gaze; and this place, this house, where he made his films, became our house, the house to which we return anew whenever we watch DIARY. He was able to transform the biography of the self into the biography of the other, and to transmute his self-portrait into the portrait of the viewer. His cinema, then, is the identity card of us all."
◊
Related Titles of Interest from GME:
During the past decade, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) has been actively engaged in seeking out and representing high quality DVD & Blu-ray publications from film archives and boutique publishers around the world, representing films and videos that encompass important works from the breadth and depth of the history of the moving image. These premiere publications are made available by GME exclusively for institutional purchase by the university market in North America. We currently offer more than 150 publications that are noted here. These works range from pioneers of the silent narrative cinema to cutting edge filmmakers of the contemporary avant-garde.
"Archival practices are undergoing reinvention, too, both enabled and blocked by opportunistic technologies. On the one hand, the superb dedication of such entities as the Criterion Collection, Milestone Films, and Gartenberg Media Enterprises, to name key players, are making possible access to a wealth of cinematic history, ephemera, and value-added materials."
– B. Ruby Rich, Film Quarterly
DVD / Blu-ray Categories
The DVD and Blu-ray publications are arranged on our website under several broad categories as noted below, that are designed to facilitate themes for academic curricula and library acquisition.
◊
Experimental Narratives & Avant-Garde Shorts
This very rich category of cutting-edge moving image works (both film and video art) encompasses films from four continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, and extend from classic films from the silent era to contemporary time-based media. Broadly speaking, the filmmakers in this category consciously play with narrative form and structure through a wide range of cinematic techniques and styles. Works featured include such diverse filmmakers as James Benning, Abigail Child, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas (US); Michael Snow (Canada); Nicholas Pereda (Mexico); Heinz Emigholz, Werner Schroeter, and Hans Richter (Germany); Germaine Dulac, Philippe Garrel, Marcel Hanoun, and Rose Lowder (France); Val del Omar (Spain); Dziga Vertov (USSR); Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Taiwan); and Apichatpoing Weerasethakul (Thailand). See also the category of Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video.
◊
This category encompasses a selection of DVD and Blu-ray publications of films directed by major artists from around the world: Georges Méliès, Abel Gance, René Clair, Marcel L’Herbier, and Louis Feuillade (France); F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, and Gerhard Lamprecht (Germany); Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Mikhail Kalatozov, and Dziga Vertov (USSR); Segundo de Chomón (Spain); and Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Charles Chaplin, Mack Sennett, King Vidor, and Allan Dwan (United States). These films star such screen idols as Asta Nielsen, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino, Alla Nazimova, Ivan Mosjoukine, Erich Von Stroheim, and Emil Jannings. See also the category of Danish Silent Cinema.
◊
Film History & Documentaries comprises important nonfiction films by Robert Flaherty (United States), Henri Storck (Belgium), Peter Von Bagh (Finland), and Henri Georges Clouzot (France). Technical developments throughout film history are represented by the DVD publication DISCOVERING CINEMA, a two-disc set of early sound and color experiments, as well as three films featuring the Cinerama process (CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE, THIS IS CINERAMA, and WINDJAMMER).
◊
The category of Genre Films comprises lesser-known motion pictures that merit further consideration in the field of genre studies. These include GOW, THE HEADHUNTER and THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, two American action-adventure films from the early 1930’s; both Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper of KING KONG fame were involved in their production. Also featured are two film noir titles from the late 1940s, TOO LATE FOR TEARS, starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott, and WOMAN ON THE RUN, shot on location in San Francisco. From Belgium, we offer 3 movies by the director/screenwriter husband-and-wife filmmaking team of Jan Vanderheyden and Edith Keil, who excelled at producing populist films about the Flemish culture.
◊
A series of restorations by the Danish Film Institute include important works by directors Carl Th. Dreyer and Benjamin Christensen, as well as August Blom, Alfred Lind, and A.W. Sandberg. Other DVD editions feature Asta Nielsen, the first diva of international renown, as well as the romantic actor Valdemar Psilander. The 5 films by Carl Th. Dreyer (LEAVES OUT OF THE BOOK OF SATAN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL, ONCE UPON A TIME, and THE PRESIDENT) are particularly noteworthy, given the rarity of celluloid projections of these films in North America.
◊
Austrian Avant-Garde Film & Video
Presents key works published by Index DVD from the Austrian Avant-Garde (1957-present), including films by Martin Arnold, Kurt Kren, Gustav Deutsch, Valie Export, Peter Tscherkassky, Maria Lassnig and Peter Weibel, among many others; this section also includes representation of selected artists from Eastern European countries.
◊◊◊
Watch for our upcoming spring releases!
