GME News
A series of films by Warren Sonbert, curated and presented by GME President Jon Gartenberg, will screen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in June as part of the museum’s annual Pride Month event We Have Always Been Here. Gartenberg adapted these Sonbert programs from the Sonbert retrospective that played at The Museum of Modern Art in May of last year.
Read MoreHappy May from Gartenberg Media Enterprises! Today, we’re reflecting on screenings, events, and celebrations from April, in New York City and beyond, related to GME colleagues, as well as titles and/or artists in our collection that we distribute to the North American university market. Notably, films by Warren Sonbert and Jean-Pierre Melville played at Sweet Void Cinema and Film Forum, respectively. GME also highlighted Hugh Bell’s portraits of jazz legends for International Jazz Day, and reflected on Jack Mitchell’s photos of dancer and choreographer Arthur Mitchell, founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, on the occasion of DTH’s festival-style weekend of performances at New York City Center.
Read MoreThis week, The Museum of Modern Art will mount the series Illuminated Hours: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, which coincides with the American release of the book of the same name, edited by Francisco Algarín Navarro and GME associate Carlos Saldaña. Later, from May 17th to May 19th, Anthology Film Archives will host the series Illuminated Hours: Three Evenings with Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, also in conjunction with Navarro and Saldaña’s book. Dorsky and Hiler were close friends and filmmaking colleagues of Warren Sonbert from the mid-1960s onward. All three helped pioneer the editing style known as “polyvalent montage.” The following video compiles Dorsky and Hiler’s appearances in Sonbert’s films THE TENTH LEGION (1967), HOLIDAY (1968), and NOBLESSE OBLIGE (1981) soundtracked by Frank Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” which Sonbert features in THE TENTH LEGION. Since 1995, GME President Jon Gartenberg has worked to further Sonbert’s legacy through a comprehensive program of preservation, distribution, programming, and publishing.
Read MoreThis Friday, April 19th, at 7pm, writer and programmer Joshua Minsoo Kim will screen Warren Sonbert’s FRIENDLY WITNESS in the second film program presented by his experimental music newsletter Tone Glow, titled Pop Music in Prismatic Utopia. The program will play at Chicago’s Sweet Void Cinema, a production company and microcinema located in Humboldt Park. GME is proud to represent the work and legacy of Sonbert, whose films — as evidenced by Kim’s program and a number of other screenings and retrospectives within recent years — have been experiencing a renaissance. FRIENDLY WITNESS, in particular, is a significant title in Sonbert’s oeuvre, as it demarcates his return to sound after many years of making silent montage films.
Read MoreToday, Warren Sonbert’s film CARRIAGE TRADE — which the artist himself described as his “magnum opus” — will screen at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Sonbert’s film plays in their exhibition A History of Cinema, which “draws an alternative narrative to the dominant cinematic canons and constitutes the founding moment of the Museum’s film collection.” CARRIAGE TRADE is currently distributed on 16mm by the Film-Makers’ Cooperative in New York, Canyon Cinema in San Francisco, and Light Cone in Paris. GME is the custodian of Sonbert’s legacy and proud to represent his significant body of work.
Read MoreHappy November from Gartenberg Media Enterprises! As we head into the holiday season, we’re looking back at events, screenings, and celebrations from last month, in New York City and beyond, related to colleagues of GME as well as films and/or filmmakers in our collection. October’s events offered a unique selection of GME artists and friends, from Dominic Angerame and James Benning, to Jeff Preiss and Jerome Hiler, both of whom were collaborators of Warren Sonbert, whose body of work GME exclusively represents.
Read MoreBeginning on October 3rd of this year, Light Cone presented the third edition of their film festival Scratch Collection. GME has a long-standing relationship with Light Cone. While working as a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Jon Gartenberg sat in on screenings when the company was being formed in 1982 in Yann Beauvais and Miles McKane’s apartment. Later, Gartenberg acquired films of Beauvais’ for MoMA’s permanent collection. We are currently working with Emmanuel Lefrant, the director of Light Cone, to distribute the international touring program of films by Warren Sonbert.
Read MoreMultimedia artist Jeff Preiss presented a video installation at Columbia University’s CCCP@10 book and film launch, which opened on October 5th of this month and runs through October 30th. GME President Jon Gartenberg and Fine Arts Curator David Deitch were in attendance at the October 5th launch. Preiss was a student of filmmaker Warren Sonbert, whose films GME exclusively represents.
Read MoreGME remembers Senator Dianne Feinstein, who passed away on September 29th at the age of 90. Feinstein was celebrated for her advocacy, in general, of the queer community and LGBTQ+ rights. She was also captured on film by Warren Sonbert, an experimental filmmaker whose work included depictions of gay life on screen, as well as encoded in the subtext of a number of his films, and whose films are exclusively represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises. Feinstein appears briefly in Sonbert’s 1981 film NOBLESSE OBLIGE, described by GME President Jon Gartenberg as “a masterfully edited work that features imagery Sonbert photographed of protests in San Francisco following the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Councilman Harvey Milk at the hands of White.”
Read MoreHappy Autumn from Gartenberg Media Enterprises! As we enter October, we’re looking back at a myriad of screenings from last month, in New York City and beyond, featuring films and/or filmmakers in our collection that we distribute to the North American university market. GME-associated artists were well-represented in September — from pioneering filmmakers like Ida Lupino, Jean-Luc Godard, Jose Val Del Omar, Maya Deren, and Man Ray, to contemporary artists like Karel Doing, Rose Lowder, and Lav Diaz. The work of Warren Sonbert, which is exclusively represented by GME, was also screened in various venues in September.
Read More
