GME DVD Distribution – Spring 2018 Releases

With the spring academic season now underway, Gartenberg Media Enterprises is proud to present a brand-new slate of DVD and Blu-ray publications for distribution to the North American academic community.  These digital editions are selected from film archives and boutique publishers worldwide, and represent the entire breadth and depth of moving image history. This current roster of moving image works extend from pioneering female director Alice Guy’s LES CHIENS SAVANTS (1902), part of an essential compilation of cinematic works by EARLY WOMEN FILMMAKERS, through to Peter Tscherkassky’s award-winning THE EXQUISITE CORPUS (2015), presented on the latest DVD compilation of his films, entitled EXQUISITE ECSTASIES (2015).

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Stan Brakhage is one of the seminal figures in 20th-century experimental cinema.  His 1958 ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT is a benchmark of the lyrical film, which postulates the artist behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film.  Noted scholar P. Adams Sitney has written that “The great achievement of ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT is the distillation of an intense and complex interior crisis into an orchestration of sights and associations which adhere into a new formal rhetoric of camera movement and montage.”   GME offers this film for the first time ever in a DVD/Blu-ray Combo Pak edition.  As this film was not represented on the Criterion DVD of Brakhage’s work, this digital publication is therefore an essential addition to any teaching and library collection of this filmmaker’s oeuvre, of experimental cinema more broadly, and of modern art in general.

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The role of women filmmakers has been generally overlooked in the writing of film histories, and the Women Film Pioneer Project attempts to rectify this oversight, as does our release for academic use and study of the 6-disc DVD boxed set entitled EARLY WOMEN FILMMAKERS: AN INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY.  International in scope, this groundbreaking collection features over 10 hours of material, comprised of 25 films spanning the years 1902-1943, including many rare titles not widely available until now, from shorts to feature films, live-action to animation, commercial narratives to experimental works. Directors include Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, Mabel Normand, Madeline Brandeis, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaia, Marie-Louise Iribe, Lotte Reiniger, Claire Parker, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), Leni Riefenstahl, Mary Ellen Bute, Dorothy Arzner, and Maya Deren.  These women were technically and stylistically innovative, pushing the boundaries of narrative, aesthetics, and genre.

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The mid-1970s saw James Benning's first feature films attract the attention of critics, establishing him as a representative of the "New Narrative Movement."  In these films, he combines the structural analysis of image, sound and narrative with auto-biographical traces, as well as with an almost "classical" interest in composition, color, light and landscape.  GME is pleased to distribute to the academic community the most recent digital edition of films by James Benning.  This 2-disc set features 11x14 (1977), one of the central U.S. avant-garde films of the 1970s, in a restored version.  Also included is Benning's recurring view of his hometown Milwaukee at three different points in time: ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE (1978), 27 YEARS LATER (2005) and ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE 2012.  These three films document both change and transience.

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We are especially proud to release two DVDs -- THE LAST CHANCE (1945) and SWISS TOUR (1949) --that GME has co-published with Praesens-Film AG, a Swiss production company founded in 1924 that is still active today.  According to film scholar Yvonne Zimmerman, “The flagship Swiss movies produced by Praesens were made primarily by foreigners, immigrants and émigrés...Praesens founder Lazar Wechsler was a Jew of Polish origin who came to Switzerland from Austria in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I… and established Praesens-Film AG in 1924… Wechsler had been able to build a stable team of highly qualified staff, which turned out to be crucial to the success of the company. Not just Praesens, but Swiss cinema as a whole, benefited from the services of émigrés and repatriates from Germany, Austria and France who from 1933 sought refuge in Switzerland from National Socialist repression. The Praesens staff included director Leopold Lindtberg, scriptwriter Richard Schweizer, cameraman Emil Berna, composer Robert Blum and film editor Hermann Haller." 

THE LAST CHANCE (1945) is one of the most important contributions to Swiss film history.  This film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It carries on where Jean Renoir's LA GRANDE ILLUSION (1939) leaves off.  Three escaped prisoners of war lead a caravan of refugees across the Swiss border to safety. 

SWISS TOUR (1949) recounts a love story set against the backdrop of American soldiers stationed in Europe in the aftermath of WWII who are on leave in Switzerland.  The main protagonist (American actor Cornel Wilde) was at the peak of his career, as wll as his two love interests; French actress Josette Day had created a sensation as Belle in LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE (1946), and Simone Signoret’s career was on the rise. 

As per Yvonne Zimmermann, “Lazar Wechsler's cinema of humanism and international understanding played a significant part in the moral rehabilitation of Switzerland abroad. The fact that Swiss banks had managed German assets and accepted gold plundered by the Nazis during the war had damaged the country's image. Switzerland's reputation was particularly badly battered in the United States. In this light, SWISS TOUR can be seen as part of a cultural image campaign run by Switzerland in the United States.”

The DVD version of this edition originates from pristine nitrate film elements that GME discovered in warehouse storage in the New York metropolitan area.  The Cinémathèque suisse acquired and preserved this material, and the restored film was shown at the Locarno Film Festival in 2007.  GME subsequently collaborated with Praesens Film to produce this digital edition.  This DVD is accompanied by an original essay by scholar Yvonne Zimmermann about SWISS TOUR, Praesens Film, and the larger cultural context in which these films were produced, together with an introduction by archivist Jon Gartenberg about rediscovering the film.

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GME is now pleased to offer a brand-new DVD edition of films by pre-eminent Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, entitled EXQUISITE ECSTASIES.  This compilation includes 4 super-8 films from the 1980s (BLOOD-LETTING, FILM OF LOVE, HOLIDAY FILM, TABULA RASA) and THE EXQUISITE CORPUS, a 35mm film from 2015.  Tscherkassky writes that “each of these films crystalizes an essential impulse at the heart of my entire artistic work: to expose the utterly distinct nature of analog transferrable to any other medium."    And, according to Daniel Kasman, Tscherkassky’s film THE EXQUISITE CORPUS works to collapse the line between the filmed body and the celluloid Tscherkassky meticulously manipulates in his darkroom...This is where Tscherkassky's love for celluloid is wedded to his source films' love for flesh, where the pathways to climax -narrative and sexual- are built from the same component parts of mystery, attraction, rhythm, repetition, variation, new sensations, and ecstasy."

Following up on our previous release of a DVD compilation of Austrian filmmaker Dietmar Brehm’s works entitled BLACK GARDEN, GME now offers DIETMAR BREHM: PRAXIS SELECTION.  According to Stephan Grissemann, “Brehm's PRAXIS series is driven by a spirit of enterprise that is clearly palpable. Since 1974 Brehm has been sensuously modulating his private iconography in ever new variations, ceaselessly engaged with his ever-growing image and sound archive, withdrawn into the interior of an infernal fantasy. There is no posturing behind his cool treatment of the disquieting signs in his work, but rather ennui, a loner life, solipsism. Dietmar Brehm orchestrates implosions and idling states. He could be seen as the representative of a telephone-game art movement: His work is post avant-garde, post-narrative, post-surreal, post-pornographic and post-psychoanalytic; it appears like an extra entry in the annals of a long since shelved cultural history, like a last-ditch effort of art after the end of time.”

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The films in this DVD edition comprise 3 of the films that Philippe Garrel made while he was still a teenager:  LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS (1964), MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE (1967), and ACTUA 1 (1968); this constitutes the adolescent period of his filmography.  These sound motion pictures immediately preceded the films from Garrel’s silent period, among them LE RÉVÉLATEUR (1968), LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (1969), and LES HAUTES SOLITUDES (1974). The films in this current DVD edition center on the trials and tribulations of youth, amidst a background of rising social consciousness and unrest.  MARIE POUR MÉMOIRE, Garrel’s first feature-length film, represents the missing link between the New Wave filmmakers and the Zanzibar group -- an informal association of young filmmakers situated within the revolutionary movement of May 1968.

This DVD edition also includes his first short film (LES ENFANTS DÉSACORDÉS), which he directed at age 16 in three days only, with the short ends from a film sketch by Claude Berri, with whom he was a trainee. Finally, there is the famous ACTUA I, a revolutionary news film --supported by Jean-Luc Godard -- on the month-long barricades of May '68, finally unearthed after 47 years from the JLG film archive.

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True to its title, the 1925, 10-reel version of THE LOST WORLD effectively disappeared from circulation in 1929—all known positive prints destroyed—a move by First National Pictures to help clear the way for another film utilizing special effects and Willis O’Brien’s cutting-edge animation techniques: King Kong. For more than 80 years, only abridged editions of THE LOST WORLD remained in existence until now.  This Blu-ray edition (also available in a DVD MOD version) of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is the most complete version of the film ever released. The 2K digital restoration features newly-discovered scenes and special effect sequences, incorporating almost all original elements from archives and collections around the world.

The film follows Professor Challenger, played by the inimitable Wallace Beery, as he and a crew of curious explorers embark on an expedition in search of a mythical, prehistoric plateau in South America. Along for the adventure are eminent scientist Summerlee (Arthur Hoyt, the director’s brother), sportsman Sir John Roxton (Lewis Stone), journalist Ed Malone (Lloyd Hughes) and Paula White (Bessie Love), whose father disappeared on the same plateau. The party is not there long before the “lost world” of the jungle begins to reveal its secrets: a primitive ape-man, a Pterodactyl flying through the air, a massive Brontosaurus feeding upon the trees, the vicious Allosaurus, and many more monstrous beasts of the Jurassic age.

GME DVD Distribution – GME Offers Experimental Film Works from China, France, and the Netherlands Now Available for Institutional Sales

GME is pleased to offer collections of avant-garde shorts by filmmakers from France (Christian Lebrat), and for the first time, moving image artists from China (Sandy Ding) and the Netherlands (Studio één).

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Sandy Ding is an experimental filmmaker who lives and works in Beijing, China. He graduated from CalArts in 2007 and started teaching in China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. This DVD edition entitled PSYCHOECHO brings together (including the bonus tracks), 7 moving image works that the filmmaker created in the United States, and later China, as well as an original “noise music” piece. This DVD is accompanied by a booklet that provides extensive insight into the artist’s concept of pyscho-active films. As a modern proponent of the postwar American "trance film" he produced psycho-active films with the idea of combining ritual processes in both projection and sound. His work is centered on energy patterns, telling mysteries through abstractions or powerful symbolic elements. He is equally interested in live performance of theater projections, installations and live noise music in order to enlarge the concept of experimental film.  

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The DVD publication entitled STUDIO EEN: EXPERIMENTAL FILMS FROM THE LOWLANDS includes works of various Dutch artists who had a main role in the early years of Studio één, from 1992 to 1996. The accompanying booklet contains a statement by each of the filmmakers.

At the end of the 1980s, many artistic, avant-garde, underground and counterculture movements seemed to be over. The rise of video and its academic use began to compete with Super8. To work against the decline of the Super 8 format and techniques, Karel Doing and two of his friends (Saskia Fransen and Djana Mileta) from the art school in Arnhem, started to think about creating a new space and promoting the invention of DIY techniques for filming and processing Super8 films.

In this particular context, Studio één was launched. They bought optical printers from a professional laboratory that was set to shut down and started to learn by themselves, out of necessity, how to process film. It wasn't long before Studio één became well known in DIY film circles and began to host various artists who come to meet each other, not only to exchange ideas and work together on the use of Super8 or 16mm, but also to experiment with diverse narrative and sound forms. Some members, Joost Rekveld for example, chose to pursue a career as a musician as well as a filmmaker. After 7 years in Arnhem, Studio één moved to Rotterdam where it continued to thrive. It became a model for many artists in creating their own laboratories, research centers and studios dedicated to experimental cinema.

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GME also continues with the release of films by key experimental artists from France. Christian Lebrat, born in 1952 in Paris, is an internationally acclaimed artist with a career spanning four decades. He is a filmmaker, video artist, performance artist and photographer, as well as a publisher, curator and writer. In 1985 he founded Paris Expérimental, a publishing company entirely devoted to publishing theoretical and historical texts on avant-garde and experimental cinema.

This DVD edition entitled VIBRATIONS, brings together 9 key moving image works created by the filmmaker over a ten-year period (1976-1985). Each film focus on an aspect of his experimentation with the use of color in cinema. The publication is accompanied by a 39-page booklet that includes an artist’s statement; an interview with the filmmaker by Vincent Deville & Émeric de Lastens, in which Lebrat provides detailed explanations about his strategy in creating each film; and a filmography.

According to the filmmaker, “My interest in color perhaps started with an exhibition that I saw. I had always been very interested in painting. One of the greatest emotions I’ve ever felt was in 1972, when I saw the Mark Rothko retrospective at the Grand Palais. That day – I still remember – I spent two hours in a single room of the exhibition, where there were four immense paintings that overwhelmed me with color; I was completely dumbstruck – transformed, even – by the contact I had with these works. It was then that I discovered the power of color.”

Digital Restoration of Warren Sonbert's WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? – Funding by the Fondazione Prada Milano

Warren Sonbert’s WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? has been digitally restored with funding by the Fondazione Prada Milano. This new digital restoration was screened at The New American Cinema Torino 1967 along with films by Robert Breer and Ben Van Meter.

http://www.fondazioneprada.org/project/program-3/?lang=en

GME DVD Distribution – Portuguese Documentary and Ethnographic Films Now Available for North American institutional Sales

In order to enrich the selection of Film History & Documentaries, GME is especially proud to offer a new DVD line recently launched by the Cinemateca Portuguesa, JORNAL PORTUGUÊS and MARGOT DIAS: ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS 1958-1961.

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The newsreel series JORNAL PORTUGUÊS (1938-1951) was conceived and employed as part of the propaganda machinery of Salazar's regime. Screened in cinema theatres prior to the main feature film, each issue of JORNAL ran approximately ten minutes in length and covered a variety of official government acts, national political news, major sports events and other assorted social and cultural affairs. JORNAL PORTUGUÊS is not only and indispensable document for the history of Estado Novo's propaganda, but also an unparalleled audiovisual archive of 1940s Portugal. Moreover, for students of the documentary, this comprehensive catalogue of each issue of JORNAL PORTUGUÊS provides a fascinating contrast with the American newsreel series THE MARCH OF TIME (1935-1951). The differing national attitudes about the impending World War, its duration, and aftermath are especially noteworthy in this regard.

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Between 1958 and 1961, the anthropologist Margot Dias (1908-2001) shot 28 films in Mozambique and Angola, which belong to the Film Archive of the National Museum of Ethnology (Museu Nacional de Etnologia). These films were made within the "study Missions on the Ethnic Minorities of the Portuguese Overseas Territories" headed by Jorge Dias and represent one of the first uses of ethnographic film within Portuguese anthropological studies.
 
This DVD edition entitled MARGOT DIAS: ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMS 1958-1961 includes all the films shot within those fieldwork campaigns and a soundtrack composed from Margot Dias's own field recordings. The identification and thematic organization of the films, as well as the soundtrack is the work of Catarina Alves Costa. Also included, as a bonus feature, is a previously unreleased interview with Margot Dias, held in 1996 by Joaquim Pais de Brito, former director of the National Museum of Ethnology.

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Documentary Films of Related Interest Available from GME:

GME archivists assist in exhibition celebrating 125th Anniversary of the Spence School

GME's long involvement as archivists at The Spence School has led to work involving the school's 125th anniversary exhibition. The exhibition, which focuses on objects from the school's archive brings attention the school's long and rich history.

https://www.spenceschool.org/page/news-detail?pk=885273&fromId=173165

GME DVD Distribution – Gideon Bachmann’s Underground New York and Serge Bard’s Ici Et Maintenant Now Available for North American Institutional Sales

The 1960’s was an era of social upheaval and anguished personal quests that was frequently represented cinematically through experimentation in narrative form. GME’s offerings of Experimental Narratives from this period include films from Spain (ADOLPHO ARRIETTA: THE ANGEL TRILOGY), France (LE LIT DE LA VIERGE and LE REVELATEUR, both by Philippe Garrel, as well as DEUX FOIS by Jackie Raynal), and the United States (ECHOES OF SILENCE by Peter Emanuel Goldman, HALLELUJAH THE HILLS by Adolfas Mekas, and GUNS OF THE TREES by Jonas Mekas).

Continuing in this vein, we now offer two new DVD editions from the turbulent year 1968: Gideon Bachmann’s UNDERGROUND NEW YORK and ICI ET MAINTENANT by Serge Bard. UNDERGROUND NEW YORK provides a rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixties, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever, and ICI ET MAINTENANT takes a more dreamlike approach in depicting the adventures of a post May ’68 Parisian wanderer. Both DVD editions are published by Re:Voir.

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In UNDERGROUND NEW YORK, a German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the New American Cinema movement that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in underground film, including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.

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In 1968, Serge Bard made three films in a row. They were DETRUISEZ-VOUS (DESTROY YOURSELF), FUN AND GAMES FOR EVERYONE and finally, ICI ET MAINTENANT (HERE AND NOW). The later film was photographed in striking black and white by cinematographer Henri Alekan (who also shot Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE). In the laboratory, the director and cinematographer had the film flashed so as to create a high-contrast, grainy, abstract and luminous image when projected onscreen. Shot primarily in long takes on the Pointe du Raz in Brittany, ICI ET MAINTENANT (HERE AND NOW) according to fellow filmmaker Patrick Deval, “consists of the dreams of the solitary rambler, post-revolution... The moralist has given up on chaos; he takes his own pulse; he listens to the world, perhaps vibrating with it; he is in sympathetic ecstasy. The filmmaker holds his position, stiff as the statue of the commander, on alert for the phenomena which approach him; he resembles the lighthouse whose rectitude Bard captures magnificently, on an ink-dark night, with its hallucinatory lamp set against a background of winds and tides."

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Related 1960s Experimental Narratives of Interest from GME: