The Early Films of Warren Sonbert

Warren Sonbert was one of the seminal figures working in American experimental film. He started making films in 1966 while a student at New York University. When he was just 20 years old, Sonbert’s first career retrospective drew the attention of the film critic Stuart Byron, who wrote in the commercial trade journal Variety: "Probably not since Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls had its first showing at the Cinematheque... almost a year and a half ago has an 'underground' film event caused as much curiosity and interest in N.Y.’s non-underground world as did four days of showings of the complete films of Warren Sonbert at the Cinematheque’s new location on Wooster St."

Sonbert’s earliest films, in which he captured the spirit of his generation, were inspired first by the university milieu and then by the denizens of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, including superstars Rene Ricard and Gerard Malanga. In these loosely structured narratives, Sonbert boldly experimented with the relationship between filmmaker and protagonists through extensively choreographed handheld camera movements within each shot. The mood of these films was further modulated by chiaroscuro effects, achieved primarily through natural lighting (in both indoor and outdoor shots), combined with variations in the raw film stock and exposure, and the use of rock ‘n’ roll music on the soundtrack.

In the late 1960s, Sonbert began traveling the world and created tightly edited, silent, montage films. He became known as the leading proponent of polyvalent montage, in which, according to Sonbert, his films were “not strictly involved with plot or morality but rather the language of film as regards time, composition, cutting, light, distance, extension of backgrounds to foregrounds, what you see and what you don’t, a jig-saw puzzle of postcards to produce various displace effects.”

Sonbert considered 1973's Carriage Trade his magnum opus. Described by the filmmaker as “a 16mm, 60-minute, 6-year compilation of travels, home movies, documents, shown silent,” Carriage Trade indelibly interweaves footage taken from Sonbert’s journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films. An evolving work-in-progress, the 61-minute version released in 1973 is the definitive form in which Sonbert realized Carriage Trade.

"With Carriage Trade, Sonbert began to challenge the theories espoused by the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s; he particularly disliked the ‘knee-jerk’ reaction produced by Eisenstein montage… [Sonbert’s polyvalent montage] approach… ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between shots through the spectator's assimilation of (according to Sonbert) 'the changing relations of the movement of objects, the gestures of figures, familiar worldwide icons, rituals and reactions, rhythm, spacing and density of images.'" —Jon Gartenberg

The Estate of Warren Sonbert has previously named Gartenberg Media Enterprises as the custodian of his legacy. Since Sonbert’s untimely passing in 1995, GME has worked on an extensive project to preserve, distribute and curate career retrospectives of his films on an international basis, as well as publish original documents from the paper archive of his writings, which are now housed at Harvard University and reprinted in a special 2014 issue of Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. A second issue of Framework, consisting of contemporaneous writings about Sonbert’s early films (from 1966’s Amphetamine through to 1973’s Carriage Trade) was published in 2024. Jon Gartenberg was Guest Editor for both Framework issues.

New digital restorations of Sonbert's early films are now available to rent as a touring package from The Film-Makers' Cooperative. The films included in this package are: Amphetamine, Where Did Our Love Go?, Hall of Mirrors (all 1966), The Bad and the Beautiful (1967), and Carriage Trade (1973).

To purchase these digital restorations of Sonbert's early films for institutional use, either individually or as a package, please contact sales@gartenbergmedia.com.