GME Attends SCMS Conference in Boston, March 21-25 & Announces Pre-Orders on Upcoming Spring Releases For Institutional Sales on DVD and Blu-ray

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is proud to be attending SCMS 2012, as an exhibitor. This year's Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference will take place at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, from March 21-25. We will be displaying an array of our premiere DVD & Blu-ray publications, including films by George Méliès (brought back to international attention by the recent release of Martin Scorsese's HUGO), Dziga Vertov, Carl Th. Dreyer, Germaine Dulac, James Benning, and many others.

In a series of forthcoming releases for the spring, GME is proud to add new DVD publications (all now available for pre-orders) of classic, silent, experimental and avant-garde film & video, including: George Méliès' famous A TRIP TO THE MOON, in its original, hand-painted color version of 1902 (2011 Winner of the National Society of Film Critics "Best Film Restoration" Award), together with THE EXTRAORDINARY VOYAGE, a seminal documentary about Méliès and the rescue of his films from oblivion; a spectacular restoration of Ernst Lubitsch's last German feature, THE LOVES OF PHARAOH (1922); the second volume of James Benning films, pairing CASTING A GLANCE and RR; the latest volume of Collection Zanzibar, Serge Bard's FUN AND GAMES FOR EVERYONE; and DEPARTURES, works by West Coast experimental filmmaker Gunvor Nelson.

These DVDs are available on an exclusive basis for sale to educational organizations in North America (universities, libraries, & other cultural institutions), and include public performance rights. Public performance rights extend to use in classrooms and in other non-commercial settings where no admission is charged.

For more information on the these titles visit here.

For information on ordering by fax, email or post visit here.

To order by phone please call: 212.280.8654

GME Representatives Jon Gartenberg and David Deitch at Exhibitors Booth.

GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES ANNOUNCES EXCLUSIVE REPRESENTATION OF THE RAIMONDO BOREA PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

Photograph © Esmond Edwards.  Used by permission.

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is proud to announce exclusive representation of the work of photographer Raimondo Borea (b. 1926 - d. 1982).  Over a 40-year career of active photography, Borea amassed an impressive body of photographs that are virtually unknown today.  And yet, his creative output permeated all areas of fine art photography, television, music, book publishing, and advertising.  

Raimondo Borea was born in Rome in 1926.   By the early 1950’s, he was already photographing candid portraits of orphaned and homeless war children housed in the  Boys’ Towns of Italy.  Borea emigrated to the United States in 1953.  He settled in New York City, where he joined the Village Camera Club and The Circle of Confusion.   Frequent meetings held by both these informal groups, attended by fellow photographers with a passion for the Leica camera, led Borea to develop his own highly personal form of creative expression.

About his photographic method, Borea wrote:

Photography enables me to discover, observe [and] understand things about people and their relationships, and it allows me to captureand hold them forever… It is by photographs, rather than by talkingabout experiences, that I communicate.

Photography is an expression of your individuality.  You start withcolor or black and white.  Then having chosen your film, the camera,the lens, the developer, the paper for the final print, you can create analmost infinite number of ways to make a photograph.

I enjoy being in my darkroom.  There is something in the still darknessthat brings out your best creative thinking.  You relive your past photography and plan your future… You experience a very specialsensation holding the end product…the picture you have printed yourself.

Building on his career as a young photographer in Italy, Borea began working full time in 1957 as a freelance photographer, travelling around New York City on his three-speed Dunelt bicycle.  He shot photographic essays of now-demolished New York City landmarks, including the Washington Market and the Third Avenue El.  He also photographed many other cityscapes, including Central Park, Riverside Park, and the New York City subway system.  In his picture-making, he often transformed these locales into studies of abstraction.  Borea also produced photographic essays from his travels around the US and abroad.

Borea was afforded exclusive behind-the-scenes access to Firing Line, The Today Show, and The Tonight Show, where he captured candid portraits of the show’s hosts, including William F. Buckley, Jr., Johnny Carson, Hugh Downs, Dave Garroway, David Letterman, and Jack Paar.  Among the guests that Borea photographed were Fred Astaire, James Baldwin, Salvador Dali, Bette Davis, Farrah Fawcett, Betty Friedan, Benny Goodman, Steve Martin, Ethel Merman, Robert Mitchum, Ayn Rand, Eleanor Roosevelt, Twiggy, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe.   Several telecasts of Borea’s photographs were also presented on The Today Show, narrated by Hugh Downs.

Over the course of his career, Borea was an active member in numerous photographic associations.  In addition to the Village Camera Club and The Circle of Confusion, he was also a member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP) and the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP), where he served as President  from 1974 to 1975.  He developed both close personal and professional relationships with well-known photographers, including André Kertész, Ruth Orkin, Esmond Edwards, Barbara Morgan, and John Albok.  A number of vintage, signed photographs by and/or of these artists are also part of the Raimondo Borea Photography Collection.

Borea’s photographs were published in numerous magazines (Boys’ Life, Ladies’ Home Journal,National Review, Pageant, and Popular Photography), in books (Bunnies in School [Scholastic]), First thing in the Morning [Cowles], Seymour, A Gibbon [Atheneum], and Who needs parks? [Rapoport Printing Corp.]), and on album covers (Hang on Ramsey ! The Ramsey Lewis Trio (Cadet) and Johnny Carson’s Introduction to New York and The World’s Fair [Columbia.]).  Borea also used his expertise in the darkroom to print photographs from the original glass negatives by Alice Austen, one of the first female photographers in America to work outside of the confines of a studio setting.  This eventually led to the publication of a book of her photographs, entitled Alice’s World.

Borea’s photographs have been exhibited in New York City at the Gallery of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Art Directors Club.  Selected photographs are held in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Libraries’ Collection, the ASPP archives, Associated Press, the University of Maryland, and SUNY/Albany.

GME is committed to resurrecting the career of this overlooked photographer, through licensing of his photographs, republishing his out-of-print books, mounting curated exhibitions, and in identifying a long-term repository for this significant collection of photographic works.

For further inquires or information, please contact

David Deitch, Fine Arts Curator at: 

david@gartenbergmedia.com

All photographs © The Estate of Raimondo Borea, except where noted.

GME Presentations at AMIA 2010 Conference, November 2-6, in Philadelphia

In 2010, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) will come together for the first time in a joint conference: November 2-6, Philadelphia, PA.

GME is represented at two of this year’s Conference Events:

Friday - November 5                                                                                                 7:30pm - 10:00pm                                                                                             International House Theater

Archival Screening Night

Archival Screening Night is the traditional centerpiece of AMIA's annual conference.  It is a unique snapshot new preservation work, footage from recent discoveries and curatorial discoveries.  Submissions are drawn from for-profit and non-profit institutions, and individual members and we work with host venues to support the full range of film and electronic formats submitted.

The Lady and the Stock Exchange (1962)                                                           Institution:  Gartenberg Media Enterprises                                                               Presenter:   Jon Gartenberg

    This film is particularly relevant given the current financial crisis.  Sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange, it dates from the prosperous Eisenhower-Kennedy era.  The film stars Janet Blair and Eddie Bracken as a couple making their first purchase of stock.  A revealing excerpt from this rare I.B. Technicolor print will be shown. 

Saturday - November 6                                                                                         10:30am - 12:00pm                                                                                                 Loew's Hotel Philadelphia (conference meeting room)

The Life and Times of Siegmund Lubin: King of the Movies

Chair: Bill Morrow - Footage File

Speakers: Jon Gartenberg - Gartenberg Media Enterprises                                                   Joseph P. Eckhardt - Betzwood Film Archive                                                                       Peter Decherney - University of Pennsylvania

    In early motion picture history we all know the names of such film pioneers as Edison, Lumiere and Griffith, but may not be familiar with the name of Lubin. Siegmund Lubin, born in Germany in the 1850s, later moved to Philadelphia where he established a thriving motion picture business.  The presentation will trace the growth of Lubin's film production enterprise as well as his personal evolution.  Though at first regarded as a shameless pirate, Lubin became the first to vertically integrate the movie industry, taking on the roles of Producer, Director, Distributor, and Exhibitor, with equal enthusiasm. Emerging as one of the best-known figures in the film industry by 1910, he crowned himself the "King of the Movies."  The session will also focus on Lubin's success within the larger context of early cinema, other studio production, and the issue of early film piracy.

International Tour of Films by Warren Sonbert Previewing in Paris on September 15

     On the evening of September 15, 2010, two programs of films by Warren Sonbert will be featured in public projections at Cinema Action Christine (4 rue Christine, 75006 Paris, Métro St-Michel, price: 6€).  The programs will be introduced by curator Jon Gartenberg, and are held as part Light Cone’s Preview Show, an annual event gathering experimental film programmers from around the world.  The two programs, which span Sonbert’s entire artistic career, announce the launch of an international tour of his films by Light Cone, the exclusive European distributor of his films.

     Warren Sonbert was one of the seminal figures of American experimental cinema.  He began making films in 1966 while a student at New York University.  Sonbert built upon his early experiments with camera movement, lighting, and framing to subsequently create brilliantly edited masterworks that encompass not only his New York milieu, but also the larger sphere of global activity.  Sonbert’s passionate interest in film, music, experimental poetry, and travel is reflected in his films; he lived a completely engaged life, and the images culled from that life formed the raw material of his artistic expression.  His late works culminated in symphonic montages (both silent and sound) that unite universal human gestures into singular works of moving image artistry.

     Following Warren’s untimely death in 1995, a project was undertaken under the auspices of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, in conjunction with curator Jon Gartenberg, to restore his final film, WHIPLASH, to public view as well as to preserve his entire extant body of work.  A complete set of preservation negatives of Sonbert’s films are now housed at the Academy Film Archives in Los Angeles. 
Sonbert retrospectives have subsequently taken place at the Guggenheim Museum (1999), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000), the Centre Pompidou (2002), the Austrian Filmmuseum (2005), Anthology Film Archives (2006), and the Harvard Film Archive (2008).

     Prints of Sonbert’s films are now available for European distribution exclusively from Light Cone.  Light Cone, in collaboration with Gartenberg Media Enterprises, will present a new tour of Warren Sonbert’s films throughout European cinematheques, festivals, and other cultural institutions beginning in the fall of 2010.

For more information visit: www.lightcone.org

Or contact us at:  info@gartenbergmedia.com

          

Recent GME News: AMIA Newsletter - “Lubin Photos” Episode on PBS’s History Detectives

AMIA Newsletter |volume 87Winter 2010| page 18

Notes from the Field

“Lubin Photos” Episode on PBS’s History Detectives

Who was Siegmund Lubin?  Was Herbert Lubin a movie star?

Jon Gartenberg, President of Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) and, GME Project Manager Jeff Capphelp PBS’s History Detectives answer these and other questions while examining two albums of “centuryold photos that may have captured the dawn of American movie-making – nearly 3000 miles fromHollywood.”

In Episode 4 of Season 7 Tukufu Zuberi calls “upon film archivists and historians Jon Gartenberg and Jeff Capp to shed some light on the Lubin film studios.  They were able to use their expertise and knowledge to reveal a forgotten history of film production in Philadelphia, assisting History Detectives in examining century old photos.”

The entire episode, originally aired on July 13, 2009, is viewable online at:
http://www.pbs.org/video/1176774004/

GME at Orphans Film Symposium, April 7-10, 2010

Jon Gartenberg and Jeff Capp will attend the Orphans Film Symposium, April 7-10, at the SVA Theatre in New York City.  The theme of this year's conference is "Moving Pictures Around The World."  Through its library excavation projects, GME has uncovered, identified and repatriated original nitrate materials on films including FOUR DAYS LEAVE (1950, Leopold Lindtberg), to the Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne, and ORPHAN OF THE WILDERNESS (1936, Ken G. Hall), to the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia; as well as many other rare films to other institutions on a global basis.

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is an in-kind sponsor of the symposium and has donated numerous DVDs from our company's international DVD collection of silent films and avant-garde cinema to support the conference activities.

2009 BEST OF AFA: BERYL SOKOLOFF PROGRAM

2009 THE BEST OF ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES

As 2009 draws to a close, we offer up a brief series representing that rarest of phenomena: the Second Chance. We’ve combed through our calendars from the last couple years and assembled a selection of a few films, videos, and programs that we feel were the major discoveries of our past half-dozen calendars, but still have not been discovered enough! The Best of AFA represents a second chance to see these films or a chance to see them for the second time. Either way, join us as we ride out 2009 with a look back at some of the more unusual and little-known gems that graced our screens in recent months.

BERYL SOKOLOFF PROGRAM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20 6:30 PM

Sokoloff (1918-2006) was a creative artist who worked in many different art forms: as a painter, a photographer, a photojournalist, a musician, and a filmmaker. In his filmmaking career, which spanned the 1950s-90s, Sokoloff focused on portraits of numerous artists and the process of making art, observations of politics and society, and poetic evocations of both New York City and landscapes encountered through his travels, frequently weaving these various threads together in individual films.

The two programs screened at Anthology last fall helped bring attention to Sokoloff’s creative vision, as well as the importance of archiving, restoring, and distributing his films. Here we have selected from the two programs to display the full range of Sokoloff’s subjects and themes.

The films in this program have not yet been precisely dated, but were all made between the 1960s-1990s.

Curated by Jon Gartenberg, in consultation with Crista Grauer, and with archival project assistance from Jeffrey P. Capp and Crystal Rangel. 

Preservation print of MY MIRRORED HOPE by BB Optics.

MY MIRRORED HOPE (17 minutes)
FIRE (11 minutes)
GAUDI (8 minutes)
LINE (11 minutes)
CHROMOCHROMO (10 minutes)
KAPITOL (9 minutes)
Total running time: ca. 70 minutes.

RARE TREASURES OF BRITISH CINEMA

September 19 – October 31, 2008

The Stanford Theatre (Palo Alto, California)

RARE TREASURES OF BRITISH CINEMA.

For more information, go to: http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/stf/calendars/British%202008.html

The Stanford Theatre

Gartenberg Media Archives has excavated a library of classic British films, which are currently on exhibition. For more information about this project, see:

Rare British films on view at the Stanford - San Jose Mercury News (PDF).

DISCOVERING BERYL SOKOLOFF

Anthology Film Archives (New York City)

DISCOVERING BERYL SOKOLOFF

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is engaged in a project to archive and restore the experimental films of Beryl Sokoloff (1918-2006), who – as a painter, photographer, photo-journalist and musician - was a permanent fixture of the New York art world. For more information, go to: www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

FELLOW TRAVELER: THE CINEMA OF WARREN SONBERT

September 26-28

Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

FELLOW TRAVELER:  THE CINEMA OF WARREN SONBERT

Warren Sonbert

The Harvard Film Archive has recently acquired the entire experimential film collection of Warren Sonbert (1947-1995), through a preservation project organized by Jon Gartenberg. For more information, go to: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/