Continuing their streak of restorations seemingly nobody would even think to undertake, The Film Desk will soon premiere a program of ten shorts directed by Rhody Streeter and Tony Ganz. Titled America: Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed Of, it’ll start a week-long run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on June 21 with the filmmakers in attendance. Ahead of this we’re pleased to exclusively debut a new trailer edited by Jake Perlin and Dee Hamid.
Here’s the synopsis: “As funny as they are unsettling, as affectionate as they are trenchant, and made with a refreshing concision that belies the depth of their cultural and social observations, the short documentaries of Rhody Streeter and Tony Ganz are ripe for rediscovery. Featured in their day on the public television series ‘The Great American Dream Machine’ and ‘The 51st State,’ and screened in the 1970s at MoMA, Film Forum and the Whitney Museum, as well as in a program curated by Amos Vogel at the Annenberg School for Communication, Ganz and Streeter’s work (which was produced under the banner of Tunbridge Films) has since fallen into obscurity, kept alive only through the devoted efforts of film collectors and programmers, notably Bradley Eros, Brian Frye, and Marie Losier. But now, thanks to Jake Perlin and The Film Desk, a number of the films have been newly restored and are poised to regain their rightful place as some of the most eccentric and hilarious examples of 1970s documentary filmmaking in the U.S. Turning their mordant, deadpan eye on a wide variety of uniquely American phenomena – from retirees in Sun Valley and honeymooners in the Poconos, to sign painters in Brooklyn, phone help-line operators, female comportment instructors, Muzak executives, and the denizens of a Bowery men’s shelter – Streeter and Ganz’s films deserve to be set alongside such masterpieces of satirical Americana as Errol Morris’s early films, Garry Winogrand’s photographs, and John Wilson’s short films and television work.”
Watch the preview below: