Love and Joy, Warren Sonbert

A pioneer of the New York Underground of the 1960s, Warren Sonbert began his filmmaking career at 18 while still an undergraduate at New York University, bursting onto the scene with exuberant and provocatively queer counterculture cris de coeur Amphetamine, followed by Where Did Our Love Go? and Hall of Mirrors, both films mini-narratives featuring his friends and Warhol superstars. In the early 1970s he began to produce thrillingly edited, incredibly rich, intensely evocative films up until his death of complications from AIDS in 1995, when he was only 47. Jon Gartenberg, noted archivist and curator, will be presenting a program of new digital restorations of Sonbert’s first three films, together with the filmmaker’s self-described “magnum opus” from 1973, the globe-trotting, years-in-the-making, dizzyingly dense Carriage Trade.

"This World Premiere screening also celebrates the return of these early films of Warren Sonbert to the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative, from where they were originally distributed to be shown at the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque and elsewhere. In recent years, Sonbert's work has experienced a renaissance among film critics, scholars, cinephiles, and the general public. His films have proven especially popular with younger audiences around the globe who are discovering his work for the first time. Gartenberg Media and The Film-Makers' Cooperative are therefore thrilled to premiere these new digital restorations of Sonbert's early films at Metrograph, a venue that deftly bridges the avant-garde with the mainstream and consistently offers adventurous and cutting-edge programming to New York City's wider moviegoing public." —Jon Gartenberg

Post-screening panel moderated by curator and archivist Jon Gartenberg and featuring the FMC’s Artist Liaison, Matt McKinzie, and Sonbert’s longtime friends, Emmy Award-winning animator and NYU professor Jeff Scher and fashion designer Barbara Hodes.

Special thanks to Sheldon Henderson (The Film-Makers' Cooperative), David Deitch (Gartenberg Media), Jack Rizzo (Metropolis Post), Elena Rossi-Snook (New York Public Library), Tom Day, Robert Schneider, and Lynne Sachs.