GME Announces New Releases of Classic Soviet Films, Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of classic Soviet silent films by Sergei Eisenstein (BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN / OCTOBER), Michail Kalatozov (SALT OF SVANETIA / NAIL IN THE BOOT), and Dziga Vertov (THREE SONGS OF LENIN), now available for institutional sales in North America.

Parallel to the foundation of the Albatros Studios in France by Russian émigré filmmakers (see FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS IN PARIS (1923-1929)), the 1920s saw the apotheosis of Soviet filmmaking in the USSR. GME currently features several new DVD publications under the label Edition Filmmuseum; they are produced by the film archive in Vienna, which is noted for its significant holdings of Soviet-era films. This archive has achieved renown for its meticulous research and presentation of DVD editions of Soviet filmmakers’ works; these presentations often feature comparisons of different versions of the same film. Our current releases comprise works by 3 of the great Soviet filmmakers of the era: Sergei Eisenstein (BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN / OCTOBER) Dziga Vertov (THREE SONGS OF LENIN), and Michail Kalatozov (SALT OF SVANETIA / NAIL IN THE BOOT). 

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MICHAIL KALATOZOV: SALT OF SVANETIA / NAIL IN THE BOOT

Kalatozov is perhaps better known for his Soviet films of the 1950’s and 1960’s – THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1959), LETTER NEVER SENT (1959), and I AM CUBA (1964). In contrast, this DVD edition presents two of his early, pioneering silent films – SALT OF SVANETIA an austere depiction of peasant life in the inhospitable terrain of the Caucusas mountains and NAIL IN THE BOOT, a biting parable of negligence in wartime. This publication won the coveted 2014 Il Cinema Ritrovato award for Best DVD.

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DZIGA VERTOV: THREE SONGS OF LENIN

Vertov’s THREE SONGS OF LENIN, his “film poem” to the founder of the Soviet Union, is, alongside MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, the most universally acclaimed and enduringly popular of all Dziga Vertov’s films. (GME has previously released a pair of Dziga Vertov’s silent film productions, A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD / THE ELEVENTH YEAR, as well as his early sound experimental masterwork, ENTUZIAZM). This current DVD edition includes both the silent and sound versions of THREE SONGS OF LENIN, and the DVD extras include 2 editions of Vertov’s Kinopravda newsreel series, together with a documentary about Vertov by Austrian Film Museum co-founder Peter Konlechner.  

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SERGEI EISENSTEIN: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN / OCTOBER

Eisenstein’s masterpiece POTEMKIN is presented in painstakingly restored German-language versions (both silent and sound), while the accompanying DVD edition of OCTOBER highlights the original release version of the film, together with fragments from the version distributed in German. They all feature the accompanying scores by Austrian-born composer Edmund Meisel, and the extensive CD Rom extra highlights the creative partnership between the filmmaker and this composer.

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Additional Soviet Films of Related Interest from GME

ENTUZIAZM

Dziga Vertov
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USSR, 1930

A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD / THE ELEVENTH YEAR

Dziga Vertov
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USSR, 1926 / 1928

BY THE LAW

Lev Kulešov
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USSR, 1926

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MISS MEND

Fedor Ozep
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USSR, 1927

FRENCH MASTERWORKS: RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉS IN PARIS (1923-1929)

Ivan Mosjoukine, Alexandre Volkoff, Marcel L'Herbier, Jacques Feyder
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France, 1923–1929

LANDMARKS OF EARLY SOVIET FILM

Various Directors
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USSR, 1924–1930

Framework 56.1 – Warren Sonbert: Selected Writings. Now Available from Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media

Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media has just released its latest issue devoted entirely to the writings of avant-garde artist Warren Sonbert. The journal features reproductions of Sonbert's original typed, handwritten and published documents. The issue is guest edited by Jon Gartenberg and is organized into sections related to Sonbert's interests in art, music, poetry, travel and film.

Click here for more information on this Framework publication.

Below is an excerpt from Jon Gartenberg's introduction to the issue entitled A Delicate Balance: Warren Sonbert's Creative Legacy:

"For the very first time, a selection of writings by filmmaker Warren Sonbert is assembled together in this special edition of Framework. Although known primarily as an experimental filmmaker, Sonbert and his career extended deeply into other realms of the creative arts. He was an opera, music, and film critic; a kindred spirit to the Language poets; a screenplay author who adapted Strauss’s 1940–41 opera Capriccio; a collaborator on other filmmaker’s productions (Gerard Malanga’s In Search of the Miraculous [US, 1967] and Charles Henri Ford’s Johnny Minotaur [US, 1971]); an essayist on both the fine and performing arts; and a leading theoretician on cinematic montage. The objective of these collected writings, then, is to expand the narrow categorization of Sonbert as a now- deceased, marginalized experimental filmmaker into a broader reconsideration of his entire creative career. This endeavor should serve to reposition his legacy as a truly Renaissance thinker who articulated, in both profound and coherent fashion, how diverse forms of artistic expression can be so deeply connected to the human condition. 

Even for students of film history who are familiar with Sonbert’s cinematic output, the texts assembled in this publication are sure to be a revelation. “Film Syntax,” Sonbert’s most renowned essay, which so lucidly articulates his unique theory of montage, has been printed numerous times in various publications. Aside from this text, however, the other articles authored by Sonbert and reproduced herein are from more obscure publications or now defunct journals, including Shiny, Motion Picture, Tikkun, CinemaNews, Spiral, and the NY Film Bulletin. In addition, numerous unpublished notes, reflections, and essays that were authored by Sonbert—both handwritten and typed—have been gathered together to be published for the first time in this journal…

…We have organized Sonbert’s writings into the following broad classifications: art, travel, music, poetry, and film. These are not designed to be rigid categoriza- tions, but rather as points of departure to demonstrate Sonbert’s facility in his dialogue between all the art forms. Our inclusion of the travel category represents the central role Sonbert’s own journeys across time and space—both physical and creative—played in the development of the artist’s own practice of his craft.9 Only in considering Sonbert’s entire creative output as a coherent entity—filmed, written, and spoken, as well as his lived experiences through travel—can we truly appreciate his genius both as an artist and humanist."

GME is the exclusive representative of the estate of Warren Sonbert. For more information on the Warren Sonbert project see our programming page.

GME Announces Two New Titles From James Benning, Now Available on DVD for Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) is pleased to announce the release of two new titles featuring four films by James Benning, NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR as well as DESERET / FOUR CORNERS, now available for institutional sales in North America. These two DVD editions are published by the Austrian Filmmuseum as part of the Edition Filmmuseum series.

“It is perhaps because James Benning’s work is so resistant to neat categorization that his films have rarely received the recognition they deserve.  His work fuses elements of American structuralism, the narrative avant-garde and experimental documentary.” 

– Danni Zuvela, “Talking about Seeing: A Conversation with James Benning”

JAMES BENNING: NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR

Since the late 1970s, James Benning's films have been a regular fixture at festivals in Germany and Austria, while frequent television broadcasts have helped expose his work to an even larger audience here than perhaps at home. This 2-disc set presents the products of this intercontinental relationship: RUHR, Benning's first foray into digital filmmaking, is a modern-day "city symphony" dedicated to Germany's industrial Ruhr district. His latest work, NATURAL HISTORY, is an audiovisual portrait commissioned by Vienna's Natural History Museum.
 
Reinhard Wulf's feature-length documentary JAMES BENNING: CIRCLING THE IMAGE, produced for German television, is a DVD extra that significantly illuminates Benning’s working method, that illuminates the manner in which his films are composed of carefully-timed, long takes and precisely selected, fixed camera positions.

JAMES BENNING: DESERET / FOUR CORNERS

“I could not have imagined that Benning’s fiftieth birthday [in 1992] would signal the beginning of the most remarkable era in his creative life…With the exception of Luis Buñuel and Alfred Hitchcock, I can think of no filmmakers who has blossomed so impressively so late in his career.”

– Scott MacDonald

In the 1990s, James Benning's films were primarily characterized by an ongoing investigation of the relationship between the image and the (spoken or written) word. This 2-disc set features the two key works representing the peak of this "text-image film" period. DESERET and FOUR CORNERS are rigorous attempts to address, engage and come to terms with the history and geography of the United States, as seen through the prism of one particular part of the country. The beauty of the shimmering landscapes is contrasted with darker exposés of American history.

In DESERET, Benning retells the history of America's Mormon State of Utah, by fusing more than 90 separate shots (comprising spectacular black & white and color landscape images), with a voiceover narrator quoting articles published in New York Times between 1852 and 1992 that reference the violent struggles between Mormons, Native Americans, and the Federal Government, as well as nuclear/biological weaponry and toxic waste sites. 
 
Benning's following film FOUR CORNERS is both a tribute to the famous region in the USA where four states converge (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah) and a portrait of four very different artists (impressionist pioneer Claude Monet, African-American folk artist Moses Tolliver, fictional Native-American wall-painter ‘Yukawa’, and Abstract Expressionist Jasper Johns). The voiceover narration deals with natural and man-made forces that have rent destruction upon the Native American population in this region.

Additional Benning Titles of Related Interest from GME

CASTING A GLANCE / RR (2007)

AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) / LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (1984 / 1986)

CALIFORNIA TRILOGY (1999-2001)

A Retrospective Film Program Curated by Jon Gartenberg at the National Gallery of Art: "American Experiments in Narratives: 2000 – 2015"

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Sunday, May 10 – Saturday, June 13

Still from Our Nixon, courtesy Penny Lane

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
 
An eclectic look at independent artist-made cinema of this century, American Experiments in Narrative includes found footage works, hand-crafted animations, hybrids of fiction and documentary, as well as live-action movies that defy classic conventions. Thematically speaking, the program presents reflections on identity, community, family, political culture, and a variety of social issues. The artists represented are well versed in historic avant-garde technique but are also consciously engaged with the film industry canons — often subverting those traditions with novel storytelling strategies. While the majority of filmmakers may lack the sort of financial backing bestowed by Hollywood, this absence of monetary support actually allows greater freedom of expression. Jon Gartenberg, curator for the series, has worked extensively on the preservation, distribution, and programming of experimental cinema. He introduces the first program.

Click Here For Catalogue of Programs in this Series.