EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKER WARREN SONBERT

The Estate of Warren Sonbert has previously named Gartenberg Media Enterprise as the custodian of the legacy of experimental filmmaker Warren Sonbert (1947-1995). Since Sonbert’s untimely passing, Gartenberg Media Enterprise 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.

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, and before he was 20 years old, his first career retrospective drew the attention of the film critic for the commercial trade journal Variety, who wrote that “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.”