In both lectures and writings about his own style of editing, Sonbert described Carriage Trade as “a jig-saw puzzle of postcards to produce varied displaced effects.” He believed this approach ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between individual shots. This occurs through the spectator’s assimilation of “the changing relations of the movement of objects, the gestures of figures, familiar worldwide icons, rituals and reactions, rhythm, spacing and density of images”.
Carriage Trade. 1972. USA. Directed by Warren Sonbert. 75 min. 16mm.
Sonbert interweaves footage taken from his journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asian and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films. Carriage Trade was an evolving work-in-progress, and this is the rare, 75-minute version that he showed in MoMA’s Cineproble series in 1971. With the film, Sonbert began to challenge the theories espoused by the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920’s; he particularly disliked the “knee-jerk’ reaction produced by Eisenstein’s montage.
Postcards from Warren. 1991. USA. Directed by Jeff Scher. 1 min. 16mm.
Jeff Scher explains, “The postcards in this film were all sent to me by my friend and filmmaking mentor, Warren Sonbert…While assembling these postcards, I almost felt as though I was making a posthumous self-portrait for him … his short but splendid life … one of the last things Warren said to me was, ‘I’ll send you a postcard.’”
Program approx. 76 min.