Amos Vogel ( Vogelbaum; April 18, 1921 – April 24, 2012) was a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

cineaste and

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

Biography

Vogel was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. He fled Austria with his parents after the Nazi

Anschluß The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany" ...

in 1938 and at first studied animal husbandry at the

University of Georgia , mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things." , establ ...

. In the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, he noted, the racism was as bad as the

anti-semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

he witnessed in Europe. Later he received a bachelor's degree from

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

for Social Research in New York. He is best known for his bestselling book '' Film as a Subversive Art'' (1974) and as the founder of the New York City avantgarde ciné-club

Cinema 16 Cinema 16 was a New York City–based film society founded by Amos Vogel. From 1947-63, he and his wife, Marcia, ran the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history, at its height boasting 7000 members. Histo ...

(1947–1963), where he was the first programmer to present films by

Roman Polanski Raymond Roman Thierry Polański , group=lower-alpha, name=note_a ( né Liebling; 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, tw ...

John Cassavetes John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and direc ...

Nagisa Oshima NaGISA (Natural Geography in Shore Areas or Natural Geography of In-Shore Areas) is an international collaborative effort aimed at inventorying, cataloguing, and monitoring biodiversity of the in-shore area. So named for the Japanese word "nagisa ...

Jacques Rivette Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...

and

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

as well as early and important screenings by American avant-gardists of the time like

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...

, Maya Deren, James Broughton,

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...

Sidney Peterson Sidney Peterson (November 15, 1905, Oakland, California – April 24, 2000, New York City) was an American writer, artist, and avant-garde filmmaker. He attended UC Berkeley, worked as a newspaper reporter in Monterey, and spent time as a practici ...

, Bruce Conner, Carmen D'Avino and many others. In 1963, with Richard Roud, he co-founded the

New York Film Festival The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, i ...

, and served as its program director until 1968. In 1973, Vogel started the Annenberg Cinematheque at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

and was eventually given a Chair for film studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he taught and lectured for two decades. He wrote a children's book, ''How Little Lori Visited Times Square,'' published in 1963 with illustrations by

Maurice Sendak Maurice Bernard Sendak (; June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012) was an American author and illustrator of children's books. He became most widely known for his book '' Where the Wild Things Are'', first published in 1963.Turan, Kenneth (October 16, 20 ...

. Vogel participated in the documentary '' In the Mirror of Maya Deren'' (2003) by Martina Kudlácek. In 2014, a collection of his writings was published by the Austrian Film Museum. On the initiative of his sons, Steven and Loring, the private library of Amos Vogel has been transferred to the Austrian Film Museum. Since 2019, th
Amos Vogel Library
a stock of more than 8,000 books, is available online. Both Columbia University and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research also hold material relating to Vogel and Cinema 16.

Death

Vogel died aged 91, on April 24, 2012 in New York City.

Work

*'' Film as a Subversive Art'' (1974) *
''Be Sand, Not Oil: The Life and Work of Amos Vogel'', FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen Vol. 24, Vienna: SYNEMA - Gesellschaft für Film und Medien, 2014 (edited by Paul Cronin)

Films about Vogel

*
''Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16'', Paul Cronin, UK, 2003; 56m
Video as a Subversive Art: The 48th San Francisco International Film Festival — Senses of Cinema
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References

External links

Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 documentaryCensoring CubaThe Subversive Nub
*
Amos Vogel Papers, 1896-2001 at Columbia UniversityAmos Vogel – 100 Years of SubversionAmos Vogel Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vogel, Amos 1921 births 2012 deaths American film critics Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss American book publishers (people) Deaths from kidney failure Film festival founders The New School alumni University of Pennsylvania faculty