Amos Vogel's passing is hitting me hard. He was a significant cultural
force, and presence in my life. I was his TA at Penn's Annenberg School from
'75-77, and worked with him on a collection of Cinema 16 program notes and
materials that we distributed to ten film archives around the world. I was
in between wanting to be an experimental filmmaker and a film scholar, and
being exposed to Amos and Cinema 16 pointed a Third Way I've been trying to
follow ever since becoming a creative programmer who collages films in
original and illuminating programs or series. The mix of experimental,
educational, documentary, animation, etc., in his programs was amazing. Amos
became my role model as a programmer and as an evangelical promoter of
filmmakers he believed in. Amos was the first to present Cassavetes, Kluge,
Ozu, Rivette (the list goes on and on).and to both show and distribute
Anger, Peterson, Broughton and many other experimental filmmakers.
Our very limited edition of Cinema 16 materials is hard to find (I did see
it in the MOMA Film Study Center a few years ago), but an even better source
of information is Scott MacDonald's Temple University Press book CINEMA 16:
Documents Toward a History of the Film Society. There's also Paul Cronin's
nice film FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16. Here's
Cronin's extensive page of information about Amos:
http://www.thestickingplace.com/film/films/film-as-a-subversive-art/introduc
tion/, which includes a link to the complete film.
Best,
Richard Herskowitz
Artistic Director, Houston Cinema Arts Festival
http://cinemartsociety.org
Director, Cinema Pacific
http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu
From: Scott MacDonald
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List
Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 1:01 PM
To: Mark Toscano , Experimental Film Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Frameworks] Amos Vogel
Yes, Mark,
Amos Vogel, one of the pioneers in building an infrastructure and an
audience for independent cinema and independent film programming in America,
died yesterday at home. He was 91.
Vogel, with his wife and partner Marcia, created Cinema 16, the
breakthrough and immensely successful New York film society, in 1947; and
Vogel ran Cinema 16, becoming not only an exhibitor but an early distributor
of experimental film, until 1963. Subsequently, Vogel and Richard Roud
created the New York Film Festival. Vogel's image-text book, Film As a
Subversive Art, published in 1974 was crucial for many of us. Vogel was also
a teacher of film history, first at the New School in New York and later at
the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Vogel was born in Vienna, and emigrated to the United States in 1938
after the the Nazis annexed Austria.
Amos was a lovely person, and a passionate cineaste with a broad range
of interests. His health had failed in recent years.
Scott
> ---- Original Message
> Subject: [Frameworks] Amos Vogel
> From: Mark Toscano
> Date: Tue, April 24, 2012 12:41 pm
> To: Experimental Film Discussion List
>
> Hi -
>
> Been hearing that Amos Vogel died today. Can anyone confirm, or does anyone
> have additional info?
>
> Mark Toscano
>
>
>
>
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