56.1

CONTENTS

Drake Stutesman

Editorial
Acknowledgments and Accreditations

Ascension Serrano
Preface

Jon Gartenberg
Introduction

ART
Jon Gartenberg
Introduction

Warren Sonbert
“Point of View”
“Does the Avant-Garde Film Still Exist?” “Jerome Robbins”

TRAVEL
Jon Gartenberg
Introduction

Warren Sonbert
“Vita”
Postcard to Jeff & Suzanne Scher, Germany, 1987

MUSIC
Jon Gartenberg
Introduction

Warren Sonbert

“Malefic Overtures” 

“Sonbert Introduction to ‘Some Notes on Capriccio’”

“Some Notes on Capriccio”

“Capriccio Script”

“Record Review”

POETRY
Jon Gartenberg
Introduction

Warren Sonbert
“Warren Sonbert Interview”
“Film Syntax”

FILM
Jon Gartenberg
Introduction 

Warren Sonbert
“Warren Sonbert Lecture, San Francisco Art Institute, August 1979”
“Rude Awakening Shot List”
Letter [excerpt 1] to Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler
“Program Notes: Carriage Trade”
“Program Notes for Screening of Carriage Trade and Rude Awakening”
“Lecture Topics”
“Warren Sonbert Filmography”
“Interview with Jean-Luc Godard”
“Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Morality”
Letter [excerpt 2] to Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler
“Warren Sonbert on Marnie”
“Douglas Sirk and the Melodrama”
Postcard to Jeff Scher [and] Suzanne Fedak, US, c. 1980
“Factory Work”
“Program Notes for PFA on Nathaniel Dorsky”
“Filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky in Person”
“Aggressive Genius”
“Cruising: Some Afterthoughts / Views from an Outsider”
“Reel Companions: Contemporary Gay Cinema”
Filmography: Warren Sonbert  

EDITORIAL

"You have to be ready to carry all that you need on your person."

                                                                    - Warren Sonbert

Jon Gartenberg is the guest editor of Framework 56.1, a special issue of writing by avant-garde filmmaker, Warren Sonbert. Sonbert, as Jon’s introduction, and this issue’s content, makes clear, was a man of eclectic interests, ranging from opera to experimental poetry. He applied compelling ideas about filmmaking to many other arts and took many ideas from other arts. Most of Sonbert’s writings are out of print, unpublished, or hard to find, so this has been a great opportunity and an unprecedented one: this issue is the first collection of Sonbert’s writings. Sonbert film clips and other materials to accompany this issue can be found on the Framework website, www.frameworknow.com.

Materials have been scanned, rather than transcribed, so they appear in the original form. (Some are accompanied by transcriptions of pages with handwrit- ten annotations and are in the Appendix.) Some are typed manuscripts, with or without annotations, and some are handwritten letters; others are prints from books, newspapers, or magazines. These visible pages, by appearing as they did in the time they were written or published, can give today’s reader a sense of the real feeling in these works and of Sonbert’s life and times.

Jon’s choices of what to include also reveal some sense of Sonbert’s lived life and show him as a man of great curiosity, strong opinions, and brilliant talent, who wrote skillfully and with polyvalent imagination on many subjects. He was a man of his times but, fascinatingly, he was more radical, and in multiple ways more modern, in his opinions than many are today.  Ascension Serrano, Sonbert’s partner, has contributed a loving preface. Jon, Ascension, and I hope this is just the beginning of deeper discussions about Sonbert’s work and of more publications to come. 

- Drake Stutesman