Truth Serum

Truth Serum is a rare work by Sonbert made in New York City in 1967. The completed film (that is missing its original soundtrack) provides a unique glimpse into his life and friends at the time including fellow filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiller. Dorsky was a close friend of Sonbert who appears in several of his films and similar imagery courses through both filmmakers’ works. But whereas Sonbert accelerated the pacing of his montage, Dorsky extended the pacing of his shots, allowing a more lingering contemplation of his images. Sonbert wrote of Dorsky’s Hours for Jerome that it was ‘simply the most beautifully photographed film that I’ve ever seen… Here cinema enters the realm of the compassionate; capturing the eye and the mind in ways unlike the predictable arena of structural film.’