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Carriage Trade

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1971 American film
Carriage Trade
Directed byWarren Sonbert
Release date
  • 1971 (1971)
Running time61 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent

Carriage Trade is a 1971 American experimental film directed by Warren Sonbert.

Production

Carriage Trade was filmed over the course of six years as Sonbert brought a Bolex 16 mm camera with him on international trips. According to his program notes, the filming locations were Afghanistan, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Iran, Italy, Morocco, Nepal, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Early titles for the film were The Tuxedo Theatre, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Tonight and Every Night.

Style

The film marked a major shift in Sonbert's filmmaking. Unlike his earlier short films, which are loosely narrative works that used longer takes, Carriage Trade is a montage work built out of shorter shots.

Release

A 20-minute early cut of the footage from Carriage Trade, then known as The Tuxedo Theatre, was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York on February 11, 1969. Sonbert screened a longer 80-minute cut in London and New York. He edited that down to a final 61-minute version which has become the most widely distributed version. It premiered in 1971 as part of the Museum of Modern Art's Cineprobe series. The Whitney Museum screened it in 1973 as part of its New American Filmmakers series.

Carriage Trade is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.

Critical reception

For The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler wrote that it "makes for a slightly dizzying but colorful and far-ranging trip, it also illustrates the talents of an acutely perceptive and artistic film maker."

References

  1. ^ Weiler, A. H. (October 12, 1973). "Silent 'Carriage Trade' Is World of Images". The New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  2. Gartenberg, Jon (2015). "A Delicate Balance: Warren Sonbert's Creative Legacy". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 56 (1): 18. doi:10.1353/frm.2015.a579198.
  3. Ehrenstein, David (October 21, 2012). "The Tuxedo Theater: On filmmaker Warren Sonbert". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  4. ^ Mekas, Jonas (November 19, 1970). "Movie Journal". The Village Voice. p. 43.
  5. ^ Gartenberg, Jon (2015). "Film". Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media. 56 (1): 156. doi:10.1353/frm.2015.a579215.
  6. Gartenberg, Jon (2002). "The Fragile Emulsion". The Moving Image. 2 (2): 142–153.
  7. "The Experimental Narratives of Warren Sonbert" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. 2023. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  8. "Essential Cinema". Anthology Film Archives. Retrieved November 21, 2023.

External links

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