THE TUXEDO THEATRE (US, 1968, Warren Sonbert)

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New York again and some Morocco. First sketches of varieties of people. East, west, city, country, rich, poor, old, young. Many levels. Less movement but more editing and geometric progressions. It’'s over before you know it. —Warren Sonbert, London Filmmakers’ Co-operative Catalogue

Filmed in 1968, Warren Sonbert considered THE TUXEDO THEATRE an early version of — or “dress rehearsal” for — the film he would ultimately regard as his magnum opus, 1973’s CARRIAGE TRADE. As in CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert traveled around the world to create a tightly-edited work of polyvalent montage in THE TUXEDO THEATRE. It was his first foray into this style of filmmaking following a series of short films, set to the popular music of the time, that documented his contemporaries (including Andy Warhol’s Factory scene) in mid-1960s New York.

As explicated by David Ehrenstein in a 2012 essay for The Los Angeles Review of Books:

[Sonbert’s early films] explored a world of ‘figuration’ — exquisite urbanites at work and play… in 1968 he turned his back on figuration in favor of visual spectacle. This began with… a project known as THE TUXEDO THEATER… vistas commingle with medium shots and even extreme close-ups on all manner of places and activities. Individuals had little place in his films from now on, but places certainly did. 

The first known screening of TUXEDO THEATRE occurred at the Jewish Museum in New York on February 11, 1969, as part of a series of avant-garde film screenings organized by Jonas Mekas and reviewed by P. Adams Sitney. Sitney acclaimed the film as:

Sonbert’s newest and best work. He has abandoned the scores of rock music that accompanied all the earlier films, and he has clearly placed the perspective in the first person singular. The film is edited, obviously so… the montage creates parallels and illusions… and above all, radical displacements… TUXEDO THEATRE evolves a juxtaposition of traditional cinematic logic and ellipsis.

GME President Jon Gartenberg notes: “This has been a major discovery in the cinematic oeuvre of Warren Sonbert. This title does not appear in the official filmography prepared by Mekas and approved by Sonbert in October 1982… because of his care in selecting the titles of his films, Sonbert may have named this film after the Brooklyn movie theater of his youth.”

TUXEDO THEATRE
(US, 1968)

Director: Warren Sonbert

  • 21 minutes
  • 16mm
  • Color
  • Silent
Distribution Format/s: DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

Published By: GME

Institutional Price: $250

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