PROGRAMMING & CURATING

Gartenberg Media Enterprises anchors its expertise in both film history and contemporary film, and has a long track record in programming a wide range of works, from major studio and independent cinema to international and experimental films, at a variety of international venues.

As the head of GME Jon Gartenberg regularly consults on  programming initiatives with various institutions in the US and Europe, that have included the BAMcinématek (Brooklyn), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna), Cinemateca Portuguesa (Lisbon), Cinema Ritrovato (Bologna, Italy) and the Pesaro (Italy) and Locarno (Switzerland) Film Festivals. Projects have included tributes to filmmakers and production entities, including  Allan Dwan and Douglas Fairbanks, Jean-Gabriel Périot and Andy Warhol, and the Vitagraph Company, as well as thematic exhibitions centered around New York City Symphony Films and American Experimental Cinema. These projects augment the myriad exhibitions that Gartenberg initiated while working as a film curator for nearly two decades in The Museum of Modern Art (New York).

 

WARREN SONBERT

 
Warren Sonbert with his Bolex camera.

Warren Sonbert with his Bolex camera.

Following Warren Sonbert’s untimely death in 1995, Jon Gartenberg has served as the exclusive representative for the filmmaker’s estate in all matters concerning his creative career. He has devised and executed a comprehensive plan for furthering this artist’s legacy. All of Sonbert’s films are preserved at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Harvard University has acquired a complete set of master prints of Sonbert’s films, in addition to his 16mm work reels and papers.

An international touring show retrospective of Sonbert’s films is available from Light Cone, the European distributor of his films. Posthumous retrospectives of Sonbert’s films have been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), SFMOMA (San Francisco), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Austrian Filmmuseum (Vienna), Anthology Film Archives (New York), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Cinemateca Portuguesa (Lisbon), International House (Philadelphia), the Tate Modern (London), the CINEMATEK (Brussels), The Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, Ohio), the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinémathèques (Israel), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), and MoMA (New York).

 

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

 
 

Jon Gartenberg was the experimental film programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival from 2003 — 2014, where he built a legacy of curating a strong representation of cutting-edge moving image works, a number of which garnered festival prizes.

 
 

"a pANORAMA OF AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVES
IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM"

 
 

Gartenberg recently curated a centerpiece retrospective for the 50th anniversary of the Pesaro Festival of New Cinema, entitled “A Panorama of American Experimental Narratives in the New Millennium." This exhibition has also toured to the 8th Athens Avantgarde Film Festival in Greece, as well as to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

 

Jon Gartenberg interviewed at 8th Athens Avant-garde Film Festival (Athens, Greece).

 
 
 
 
 

THE FRAGILE EMULSION

 
DECASIA (Bill Morrison, 2002)

DECASIA (Bill Morrison, 2002)

 

Curator Jon Gartenberg provides an in-depth analysis of the ephemeral nature of the experimental filmmaking enterprise, focusing in particular on moving image works produced in 16mm celluloid format.  Both literally and metaphorically, these artists ingrain the fragility of human existence onto the sensitive nature of the film emulsion. Drawing from his extensive experience in archiving, distribution, and curating, Gartenberg articulate ways in which these ephemeral materials have been brought back to life for future generations.

 

ANDY WARHOL

 

At The Museum of Modern Art in the mid-1980’s, Jon Gartenberg spearheaded the first round of preservation of Andy Warhol’s films, in conjunction with an exhibition series at the Whitney Museum in 1988. This project led to Gartenberg's presentation of Warhol’s movies in France, Italy, Japan and Portugal in the early 1990’s. For an exhibition of Warhol’s films organized at BAM in 2003, Gartenberg authored an essay reflecting on his experiences in archiving Warhol’s films.

 

HOWL! ARTS PROJECT

Wholly Communion (1965), Peter Whitehead, featuring Allen Ginsberg

Wholly Communion (1965), Peter Whitehead, featuring Allen Ginsberg

 

For the 2009 edition of the Howl! Arts Festival, Gartenberg curated a special 7 part film series that linked film and video to the various underground creative movements transpiring in the East Village in fact and in spirit: poetry, music, theater, performance, and fine art painting as well as protests affirming sexuality, opposing gentrification, and supporting the flourishing of a subversive culture.

 

NEW YORK CITY SYMPHONY FILMS

 
 
 

Beginning in the 1970s, while working as a curator in the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art, GME President Jon Gartenberg conducted extensive research into New York City Symphony films, especially as represented in avant-garde, experimental, and independent movies. Throughout his career he has curated programs for numerous museums, festivals, and conferences internationally, including MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art; “Visions of New York” programs for Ciné-Memoire (Paris) and a festival devoted to American Avant-Garde Cinema in Turin (Italy); and a conference on “Architecture, the City, and Cinema” held in Arrábida (Portugal).

For the Fall 2014 (Vol. 55, No. 2) issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Gartenberg contributed an essay about the history of New York City Symphony films, titled: NY, NY: A Century of City Symphony Films. In it, he notes: “Since the dawn of the twentieth century, independent and experimental artists, as well as commercial filmmakers, have paid tribute to the dynamically changing landscape of New York City… films include scenes from atop skyscrapers, under bridges, through parks, down Broadway, and in Coney Island… in cinematic terms [“city symphony” films] represent the articulation of both a defined time frame (most often from morning until evening) as well as a carefully articulated geographic space.”

Gartenberg expounds on this genre and style of filmmaking in an engaging interview from December 21st, 1979, broadcast on the WNYC-TV series New York on Film, courtesy of Stewart Buck. The interview can be viewed, in full, above.

In the video below, Gartenberg discusses programming Steve Bilich’s 2005 city symphony film Native New Yorker at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary Short:

 
 

On August 9th, 2024, at 7pm, Gartenberg presented a program of politically-trenchant New York city symphony films at Allied Productions Project Space in New York City. Spanning the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, the five films in this program posit New York City as a backdrop, and conduit, for political discourse pertaining to the AIDS crisis, economic gentrification, and 9/11. In Jack Waters' BERLIN/NY (1984), fenced-in empty lots of the Lower East Side are contrasted with views of East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie, with Waters commenting on the potential for capitalist exploitation of these two sites. In Jim Hubbard's ELEGY IN THE STREETS (1989), silent footage of marches, vigils, police confrontations, and the AIDS quilt coalesce to form a direct response to the negligence of Reagan-era political figures towards the AIDS crisis. Abigail Child's B/SIDE (US, 1996) captures the plights of the homeless in Tompkins Square Park, while Jem Cohen's NYC WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (2006) and Steve Bilich's NATIVE NEW YORKER (2006) reexamine the tragedy of 9/11 through the lenses of political repression and Indigenous identity. Together, these films critically engage with a myriad of seemingly disparate yet undeniably interconnected sociopolitical issues still impacting the metropolis we call home.

To view Gartenberg’s introduction to the program — and to hear artist and co-founder of Allied Productions, Jack Waters, introduce Gartenberg — watch the video below.

 
 

BROOKLYN ON FILM: THEN AND NOW

 

Little Fugitive (1953), Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, and Ray Ashley, starring Richie Andrusco.

 

Within the niche of New York City Symphony films, Gartenberg has also embarked on extensive research and curatorial efforts regarding filmic depictions of Brooklyn specifically. For the inauguration of the BAMcinématek, Gartenberg curated a one-time, exclusive multimedia event (comprising film, video clips, slides, and audio) of a tribute to the Borough of Brooklyn spanning a century of cinema, organized around such icons as the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island, and such themes as the Brooklyn Dodgers and Integration, and Art and Industry — Pride and Disaster.

 

THE COVER OF BROOKLYN: A STATE OF MIND — 125 ORIGINAL STORIES FROM AMERICA’S MOST COLORFUL CITY (2001) BY MICHAEL W. ROBBINS AND WENDY PALITZ.

 

In addition, Gartenberg has conducted extensive research into Early Cinema at the turn of the 19th century, including the Biograph, Edison, and Vitagraph companies. In this vein, the completion of Vitagraph’s glass-enclosed studio at East Fifteenth Street and Locust Avenue in Brooklyn in August 1906 was enormously significant; it enabled the company to establish much greater artistic control over the mise-en-scène in the production of their films. In this regard, they far outpaced the studio construction of the Biograph and Edison companies. See Gartenberg’s article on “Vitagraph Before Griffith: Forging Ahead in the Nickelodeon Era” (Studies in Visual Communication, Volume 10, Issue 4, Fall 1984).

Furthermore, essays by Gartenberg on various films depicting Brooklyn landmarks and neighborhoods appear throughout Michael W. Robbins and Wendy Palitz’s 2001 book Brooklyn: A State of Mind — 125 Original Stories from America’s Most Colorful City, in a recurring section titled “Brooklyn On Film.”

 

“NAUGHTY FILMS AT THE LIBRARY: AVANT-GARDE WORKS IN THE RESERVE FILM AND VIDEO COLLECTION”

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN’S FUSES (1967). SOURCE: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.

In recognition of Banned Book Week, GME President Jon Gartenberg collaborated with NYPL Film Collection Specialist Elena Rossi-Snook to assemble an array of avant-garde movies that approach sexual engagement in candid fashion, and thus can be considered “naughty”, as defined in terms of being sexually provocative. This program, titled Naughty Films at the Library: Avant-Garde Works in the Reserve Film and Video Collection, screened at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on Thursday, September 19th, 2024.

The filmmakers featured in this program employ abstraction, superimposition, treatment of the film emulsion, found footage, pop music, and other techniques which place their works in the experimental filmmaking idiom. These movies challenged the boundaries of societal acceptance and concurrently invoked various forms of disapprobation and censorship. Featuring work spanning from 1896 to 1974 (and all projected in 16mm), this program highlighted the mutability and subjectivity of censorship, and emphasized how specific social and political milieux determines if a work of art is “acceptable” or “objectionable.”

The Edison Company’s THE KISS (1896), Jean Genet’s UN CHANT D’AMOUR (1950), Stan Brakhage’s WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1959), Kenneth Anger’s KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965), Carolee Schneemann’s FUSES (1967), Bruce Conner’s MARILYN TIMES FIVE (1973), and Barbara Hammer’s DYKETACTICS (1974) were featured in this program.

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