Amos Vogel (1922 - )
Related: avant-garde film - film society - Cinema 16 - curator - American cinema - New York - Film As a Subversive Art (1974) - film
Film As a Subversive Art (1974) - Amos Vogel [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Biography
Amos Vogel (*1921 in Vienna, Austria) had to leave Austria in 1938. He is best known as founder of the New York City avantgarde ciné-club Cinema 16 (1947-1963) and of the New York Film Festival . Vogel is the also the author of the book Film as a subversive art, still among the most unorthodox film histories ever published.
Vogel participated in the 2003 documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren by Martina Kudlácek. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Vogel [Aug 2005]
Profile
As one of America’s most important curators, historians and festival directors, his influence on artists, experimental and underground film cannot be overstated. Born in Austria in 1922 but resident in New York since 1938, Vogel created the path-breaking film society Cinema 16 in 1947, introducing a continent to previously unseen worlds of experience. 20 years on, he established the New York Film Festival and with his eye-changing book Film as a Subversive Art, penned a revolutionary analysis of the moving image. --Gareth Evans, http://www.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=84 [Aug 2004]Founder-director of Cinema 16, America's largest and most famous film society, and director of the New York Film Festival and the Lincoln Center Film Department (until 1968), Amos Vogel has been in the forefront of discovering new film talents for almost three decades. He has been film consultant to Grove Press and National Educational Television, a member of many international juries, program directorof the National Public Television Conference, and has lectured widely in America and Europe on film aesthetics and history. He also was chairman of the American Selection Committee for the Cannes, Moscow, Berlin, and Venice International Film Festivals. He is on the faculty of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School, and is a regular contributor to the Village Voice, the New York Times, and other publications. --(original book credit)
Cinema 16 (1947 - 1963) [...]
Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (2003) - Paul Cronin
An hour-long filmed profile of Amos Vogel, 82-year old New York resident and Austrian emigre, founder of the New York Film Festival and America's most important film society, Cinema 16 (founded in 1947). --http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393288/ [Aug 2004]
Speaking recently about the myriad dangers facing humanity, director-provocateur Werner Herzog cited ‘the lack of adequate imagery’ as one of the most troubling. It’s a view Amos Vogel would surely endorse. As one of America’s most important curators, historians and festival directors, his influence on artists, experimental and underground film cannot be overstated. Born in Austria in 1922 but resident in New York since 1938, Vogel created the path-breaking film society Cinema 16 in 1947, introducing a continent to previously unseen worlds of experience. 20 years on, he established the New York Film Festival and with his eye-changing book Film as a Subversive Art, penned a revolutionary analysis of the moving image. Now, in Cronin’s valuable tribute to an extraordinary man and his times, Vogel delivers a series of compelling and entertaining reflections on a life lived in the passionate belief that film has a fundamental, radical and ethical role to play in society. Required viewing for anyone who believes cinema matters. Really matters.--Gareth Evans, http://www.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=84 [Aug 2004]
Jonas Mekas [...]
BF: What was your relationship to Amos Vogel and Cinema 16?JM: We were friends. My brother and I attended every single Cinema 16 program. It was one of our schools. And the relationship was always very friendly. We were in the same field. That is until January '62, when it became clear that Cinema 16 had lost touch with what was happening in the underground cinema. And it was not only Cinema 16: all the other distributors made fun of us, and did not want to distribute our films. So we felt that we had to create our own distribution center, which led to the creation of the Filmmakers Cooperative. Its roots really go back to '59, when we created the New American Cinema Group, and began our meetings and discussion of financing and distribution. We realized that some of the new works were not distributed at all, either because distributors felt they were badly made, were not interesting, or were just foolings around. They did not understand the changing techniques and changing styles, the new content and the new forms. They could not accept them. So we decided that it was time to start our own cooperative distribution/dissemination system. And Amos came to the first meeting, to the 'creating' meeting, in which there were like twenty filmmakers in attendance, and he tried to talk us out of it. He did everything, and it didn't work. He said, "This will be a disaster, the field cannot afford two distribution centers." Everybody said, "Yeah, but you are not distributing our films. So there is no competition here." And of course we created the Cooperative. And there, since that moment, Amos took a position against me. He thought: “it's Jonas's clique, Jonas's invention, and it's destroying the field”. And I would say his opposition went to extremes when in '64 I was arrested for screening Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963) and a Genet (Un Chant d'Amour, 1950). Instead of supporting and fighting censorship, he attacked me in the Village Voice: "[Flaming Creatures] is a stupid, bad film, and why did he screen it?" More or less, it's good that I was arrested. It was absurd. --http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/17/mekas_interview.html [Aug 2004]
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