Amos Vogel (born Amos Vogelbaum; April 18, 1921 – April 24, 2012) was a New York City cineaste.Vogel was born in Vienna, Austria. He fled Austria with his parents after the Nazi Anschluß in 1938 and at first studied animal husbandry at the University of Georgia. In the American South, he noted, the racism was as bad as the anti-semitism he witnessed in Europe. Later he received a bachelor's degree from The New School 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 (1947–1963), where he was the first programmer to present films by Roman Polanski, John Cassavetes, Nagisa Oshima, Jacques Rivette and Alain Resnais as well as early and important screenings by American avant-gardists of the time like Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, James Broughton, Kenneth Anger, Sidney Peterson, Bruce Conner, Carmen D'Avino and many others. In 1963, together with Richard Roud, he founded the New York Film Festival, and served as its program director until 1968. In 1973, Vogel started the Annenberg Cinematheque at the University of Pennsylvania and was eventually given a Chair for film studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he taught and lectured for two decades.Vogel also wrote a book for children, How Little Lori Visited Times Square, published in 1963 with illustrations by Maurice Sendak.Vogel participated in the documentary In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2003) by Martina Kudlácek. Vogel died, aged 91 on April 24, 2012, in New York City.
[letter to Stanley Kubrick, 1968]: "2001" is one of the few films that catches, in a very understated way, the ominous irony of present-day trends toward an inhuman society, as well as the metaphysical mystery of the universe, which is as clear to thoughtful atheists as it is to truly religious people. I'm afraid that neither one of these two aspects of your film was grasped by so many of the critics.
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The commercialization of art and entertainment is a negative factor in human development.
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Films were always selected from the point of view of how they would collide with each other in the minds of the audience.
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The individual brave enough to venture into this troublesome field must be no matter what the size of the audience, an organizer, promoter, publicist, and copyrighter, businessman, public speaker, and artist. A conscientious if not pedantic person versed in mass psychology, he must have roots in his community. And he must know a good film when he sees it.
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Fact
1
He is survived by his two sons, Steven Vogel and Loring Vogel and four grandchildren.
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Son of Mathilde Vogelbaum, a teacher; and Samuel Vogelbaum, a lawyer. He began his fascination with film when his father bought him a 9.5 millimeter camera. His family fled the Nazis and spent several months in Cuba before coming to the United States. He was determined to make a life in a Jewish homeland, prepared by living on a kibbutz by studying animal husbandry at the University of Georgia. But by 1941, he had abandoned his belief in Zionism and settled in New York City where he trained as a diamond cutter in the jewelry district.
3
He founded Cinema 16 in 1947 and ran it with his wife, Marcia Vogel, until 1963. He founded the New York Film Festival in 1962. He directed the festival from 1963 to 1968. He was the film department director at Lincoln Center in New York City. He was also a film consultant to Grove Press and National Educational Television. He taught at Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, New York; New York University in New York City; Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he was director of the film at the Annenberg Center.
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Founded the Lincoln Center Film Department. Co-founded the New York Film Festival - was the first director of the film festival, programming there until 1968.
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With wife Marcia Vogel created the US film society Cinema 16.
Actor
Title
Year
Status
Character
Die Geschichte einer Vertreibung
1996
Thanks
Title
Year
Status
Character
Sum of its pArts
2011
Documentary short special thanks
Notes on Marie Menken
2006
Documentary acknowledgment: with the generous help of
Self
Title
Year
Status
Character
Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16
2004
Documentary
Himself
Im Spiegel der Maya Deren
2001
Documentary
Himself
Invocation: Maya Deren
1987
Documentary
Himself
Won Awards
Year
Award
Ceremony
Nomination
Movie
2003
Stan Brakhage Vision Award
Denver International Film Festival
To the founder of Cinema 16 and the New York Film Festival.
Known for movies
Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (2004) as Himself
$1.6 Million
