Carriage Trade was an evolving work-in-progress, and this 61-minute version is the definitive form in which Sonbert realized it, preserved intact from the camera original. With Carriage Trade, 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. 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.” This approach, according to Sonbert, ultimately affords the viewer multi-faceted readings of the connections between individual shots. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

An ode to queer sex and drugs, boys shooting up and kissing. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1998.

The Cup and the Lip is a complex and challenging picture that will stimulate adventurous filmmakers for years to come. Although its imagery is too dense, varied and fast-moving to be thoroughly parsed after one viewing, the film appears to be a regretful and perhaps sardonic essay on human frailty--and on the effort to stave off chaos by means of political and religious institutions, which carry their own dangers of social control and mental manipulation.

In Friendly Witness, Sonbert returned, after 20 years, to sound. In the first section of the film, he deftly edits a swirling montage of images - suggestive of loves gained and love lost--to the tunes of four rock songs. Fred Camper said, "At times the words of the songs seem to relate directly to the images we see...; at other times words and images seem to be working almost at cross-purposes or relating only ironically. Similarly, at times the image rhythm and music rhythm appear to dance together, while at others they go their separate ways." -- Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

Warhol Factory days... serendipity visits, Janis and Castelli and Bellevue glances... Malanga at work ... glances at Le Mépris and North by Northwest... girl rock groups and a disco opening... a romp through the Modern. My second film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

Sonbert was also a noted opera critic, and he frequently theorized about the relationship of film to other art forms, in particular, music. He analogized the notes, chords, and tone clusters of music to the progression of shots in film. The shot was the building block upon which Sonbert created the musical rhythms of his films. Sonbert published excerpts from his feature-film screenplay adaptation of Strauss' Capriccio, his favorite opera, in 1986. Short Fuse, completed six years later, can be seen as a return to Capriccio's themes, including 'Nazism and eroticism, beauty and force, detail and structure.' (William Graves) Underscoring a question raised by Capriccio--whether in opera the music or the libretto takes priority--Short Fuse is replete with a soundtrack that counterpoints the film's visuals, prompting the viewer to ask whether the music or the imagery predominates. -- Jon Gartenberg

During the years preceeding his death, Sonbert channeled his energy into making Whiplash. His vision and motor skills impaired, he gave his companion, Ascension Serrano, detailed instructions about the assembly of specific shots and the music to be used as a counterpoint to the images. Before his death in 1995, he asked filmmaker Jeff Scher (a former student of Sonbert's at Bard) to complete the film. --Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1996.

Warren Sonbert described Divided Loyalties as a film 'about art vs. industry and their various crossovers.' According to film critic Amy Taubin, "There is a clear analogy between the filmmaker and the dancers, acrobats and skilled workers who make up so much of his subject matter." -- Jon Gartenberg. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

The style is relatively unchanged, but the images--press conferences, news events, disasters--convey his vision of the world in a new, direct, political fashion. Featuring startling footage of the City Hall riots after Councilman Dan White received a light prison sentence for slaying San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, Noblesse Oblige opens a new chapter on Sonbert's career. --David Ehrenstein, LA Reader. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.

Sonbert was also a noted film critic, and his writings about feature films are among his more extraordinarily profound and insightful creations. In them, he expressed admiration for a pantheon of American directors working within the studio system, including Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk. An indication of his enthusiasm for Hitchcock was his reputation for conducting tours for visiting friends, associates, and filmmakers of the locations around San Francisco used by Hitchcock while filming Vertigo (1958), and for signing his reviews under the pen-name Scotty Ferguson, the so-named protagonist of this renowned film. In 1986, Sonbert gave a lecture at the Pacific Film Archive, in which he spoke of the "schizophrenic split" in Marnie between "images of /en/closure and escape", representing the interplay between male domination and female independence. Sonbert paralleled these conceits in his own film, A Woman's Touch. -- Jon Gartenberg