TATE FILM TATE Warren Sonbert Warren TATE FILM Warren Sonbert

TATE FILM Warren Sonbert Warren Sonbert with his film camera © The Estate of Warren Sonbert TATE FILM Warren Sonbert WARREN SONBERT WARREN SONBERT: AMPHETAMINE NOBLESSE OBLIGE Retrospective of seminal American Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium Warren Sonbert, USA, 1981 experimental filmmaker Thursday 24 October 2013, 16mm, 25 min Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium 19.00–21.00 24–27 October 2013 My new project, tentatively called Noblesse Adults £5 / concessions £4 AMPHETAMINE Oblige, is about journalism, reportage, Season ticket £30 news events that you might see on the Warren Sonbert & Wendy Appel, USA six o’clock news report, how the news 1966, 16mm, black-and-white, 10 min is created, how it might affect our lives, Warren Sonbert is one of the seminal figures Defined by many contrasting influences from and journalists’ responsibilities. in American experimental film. A precocious rock-and-roll to opera, from Douglas Sirk’s talent, he had his first career retrospective classic Hollywood melodramas to the montage First film, heavily influenced by Godard and Warren Sonbert, ‘Warren Sonbert before he turned 21 years old, establishing theories of Dziga Vertov, his films constantly Warhol – designed to shock. Lecture, San Francisco Art Institute, his reputation early as a key innovator in question the world around him and positions August 1979’, Film Culture New York’s counter-culture during the 1960s. the minutiae of day-to-day experience in an Warren Sonbert, Warren Sonbert Encouraged to take up filmmaking by Gregory epic, international framework. His complex Retrospective, program notes, Museum The style is relatively unchanged, but the Markopolous, his early works were populated editing style – cutting rapidly between time of Modern Art, Oct 14–18, 1994 images – press conferences, news events, by denizens of Warhol’s scene such as periods, cultures and continents – creates disasters – convey his vision of the world superstar René Ricard and Gerard Malanga, a polyphonic cinema embraced equally by An insidious little film which critic James in a new, direct, political fashion. Featuring as well as art critic Henry Geldzhaler. Often film and by literary circles leading to his close Stoller called ‘a heart stopper’. Loop- startling footage of the City Hall riots after characterised as diaristic, his films pay association with the New York School and like repetitions of adolescent junkies Councilman Dan White received a light close attention to intimate details of his Language Poets from the San Francisco Bay concentrating on their fixes, each caught in prison sentence for slaying San Francisco surroundings and relationships that evolved Area (including Michael Brownstein, Larry similar framing, cut together in jump-cut Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor from his living in New York and San Francisco, Fagin and Anne Waldman as well as Carla fashion, all more or less locked into the Harvey Milk, Noblesse Oblige opens a new but also developed a unique lyrical form Harryman and Charles Bernstein). The first continuous ‘rush’, while, on the soundtrack chapter on Sonbert’s career. that transcends their quotidian detail to complete retrospective of his work in the UK, the Supremes keep asking, ‘Where Did Our explore our individual human position in this series will position newly restored works Love Go’, a powerfully cyclic montage of David Ehrenstein, LA Reader, the world at large. alongside films by his peers such as Stan these adolescent boys fixing, nodding and April 16, 1982 Brakhage, Abigail Child, Nathaniel Dorsky, embracing; the film imparts a feeling of Gerard Malanga, Gregory Markopoulos, Jeff existence replaced. CUT to wedding cake CUT – noblesse oblige Scher, and Andy Warhol, as well as Douglas – let ‘em eat cake. The wedding contrasts Sirk’s feature film Tarnished Angels (1957). Warren Sonbert, Film-Makers’ with the film’s pervasive mourning, Cooperative Catalogue funerals. It’s a slice of life shot (journalists Co-curated by Jon Gartenberg recording, artists transforming), and life’s with Tate Film. a slice of cake. Trouble in paradise already though – an argument at the slicing – Organised by George Clark, disruption already implied amidst Union. A Assistant curator: Film, Tate Modern wrong turn from the work’s possible paths: like the acrobats later on, starting out on Sonbert Tate Film is supported by the wrong foot (the marriage happened to Maja Hoffmann / LUMA Foundation last six months). Unlike the thread of the 1967 film still runners – or are they going anywhere. Warren Sonbert, ‘About Noblesse Oblige’, Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel, © The Estate of Warren Amphetamine typed ms. n.d. Note: See also entry for October 26 (15:00) screening of Tarnished Angels. TATE FILM ErickaWarren Beckman: Sonbert Image Games WHIPLASH 2) Mambo West Side Story – Track 6 3/2 WARREN SONBERT: THE TUXEDO THEATRE Warren Sonbert, 1995 (completed mins. – Spain, Dances, Bullfight THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Warren Sonbert, USA 1968, 16mm, posthumously 1997), 16mm, 20 min colour, 21 min 3) Gotterdamurung Disc 1 Cut 7 at Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium 1:16 – 1 min. Friday 25 October 2013, 19.00–20.30 New York again and some Morocco. First 4) The Sea Hawk Track 1 1 min.: Rousing, sketches of varieties of people, East West explosive city country, rich poor, old young. Many THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL levels. Less movement but more editing 5) Creedence Track 10 6-7 mins. Grapevine: Warren Sonbert, USA 1967, 16mm, and geometric progressions. It’s over sxy. dance Porn 1995, film still 1995, colour, 34 min before you know it. Sonbert Ariana Jeff + Suzanne Whiplash Warren Sonbert, London Film Makers 6) Capriccio Last scene Moonlight Music – A collaborative exercise between the Co-Op Catalogue, 1993 3mins. – Serene couples and myself. Tuxedo Theatre (1969) is Sonbert’s newest Warren Sonbert, © The Estate of Warren Warren Sonbert, Typed notes for Warren Sonbert, Film-Makers’ and best work. He has abandoned the soundtrack of Whiplash, n.d. Cooperative Catalogue No. 7, 1989 scores of rock music that accompanied During the years preceding his death, all the earlier films; and he has clearly Sonbert channeled his energy into I’ve made a new film… It’s a 32 minute placed the perspective in the first person making Whiplash. His vision and motor epic called The Bad and the Beautiful I shot a singular. This film is edited, obviously so. skills impaired, he gave his companion, 3-minute roll on 9 couples at home, in the Yet it preserves in tone and development Ascension Serrano, detailed instructions country, at a horse show, etc. The film is the sense of a diary. The montage about the assembly of specific shots and entirely edited in the camera and it worked creates parallels and illusions (such as the the music to be used as a counterpoint wonderfully I’m happy to say. Reaction to television butterfly cut into the line of sight to the images. Before his death in 1995, it has been very good (although it hasn’t of the young man looking up in the park) he asked filmmaker Jeff Scher (a former been shown publicly yet, just to a huge and above all, radical displacements. For student of Sonbert’s at Bard College) to group of the cast, friends, critics). instance, the film-maker approaches an complete the film. airplane, up the gangplank, there’s a take Warren Sonbert, off (logically of a different craft), a shot Whiplash is a compelling, multilayered Letter to David Curtis, n.d. from inside the flying wing, a landing, portrayal of the filmmaker’s struggle to and we are in a southern climate, perhaps maintain equilibrium in his physical self, his California. Then suddenly after a few shots perceptual reality, and the world of friends we are in a Moorish market, or overlooking and family around him. In it, Sonbert 1969, a skyline of minarets. So the Tuxedo Theatre articulated the ideas and values by which evolves a juxtaposition of traditional Sonbert he intended to be remembered. Most cinematic elements. important among these is the theme of love between couples. P. Adams Sitney, Warren Sonbert: Where TheBad and theBeautiful Did Our Love Go?; Tuxedo Theatre, ‘The Jon Gartenberg, Canyon Cinema Film / Avant garde Film Series at the Jewish Video Catalog, 2000 Museum 1969,’ programme notes, 1969 film still © The Estate of Warren TheEstateof © still film 1) Lawrence – Track 2 – 2 mins.: Jamie on Warren Sonbert, skates, NY Parade. [?] contingent – Scottish POV [?] Israelis on parade NY, Israelis kissing Torah at Wailing Wall, Parade 4th of July, idiot medals TATE FILM ErickaWarren Beckman: Sonbert Image Games WARREN SONBERT: of my earlier work & indeed contains POSTCARDS FROM WARREN Lohengrin but a nifty Pique Dame (I’ll POSTCARDS FROM WARREN some similar material that you are already Jeff Scher, USA, 1999, 16mm, 1 min defend Tchaikovsky), so hopefully you’ll familiar with only shifted around – of course be around end of Feb. on my next (fairly Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium placement & length changes an on-going extended) trip in? Debut new MOMA Friday 25 October 2013, time form. Usually each showing entails The postcards in this film were all sent to theater. Hug to S. Best Warren 21.00–22.30 a different version but I’m getting pretty me by my friend and filmmaking mentor, fed up with it and for the past 6 months Warren Sonbert, who died of AIDS in Warren Sonbert, postcard to Jeff Scher, I’ve been shooting footage for an entirely 1995. Warren was a great traveler and November 1982 CARRIAGE TRADE different project which isn’t anywhere postcards were his preferred method of near completed even as far |as filming is communication. Warren Sonbert, USA 1972, 16mm, concerned. colour, 61 min The images on the cards were picked as Warren Sonbert, Letter to Simon Field carefully as the images in his films, and the and David Curtis, April 14, 1973 amount of space on the back was perfect 1999, for his microscopic handwriting or neat A 16mm 60 minute 6 year compilation typing.

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