New York, NY – (April 25, 2012) The leading figure of modern American film culture, a rebellious champion of independent and international cinema and the co-founder of the New York Film Festival, Amos Vogel died yesterday in New York, the city where -- in 1947 -- he created the landmark film society, Cinema 16.
Born April 18, 1921 in Vienna, Austria, as Amos Vogelbaum, Amos Vogel was 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). In 1963, he co-founded the New York Film Festival with Richard Roud, serving as its program director until 1968.
Vogel worked as a film consultant to Grove Press and National Educational Television, a program director of the National Public Television Conference, and has served as Chairman of the American Selection Committee for the Cannes, Moscow, Berlin and Venice film festivals. He also taught at Harvard University, the New School for Social Research, New York University. In 1973, Vogel started the Annenberg Cinematheque at the University of Pennsylvania and later was given a Chair for film studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he taught and lectured for two decades.
Responding to Vogel’s passing, Martin Scorsese said, "If you’re looking for the origins of film culture in America, look no further than Amos Vogel. Between Cinema 16 (which he ran with his beloved wife Marcia and which opened our eyes to Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger, Cassavetes’ Shadows, and hundreds of other visionary films and filmmakers), The New York Film Festival (which he co-founded with Richard Roud), and his book Film As a Subversive Art, Amos opened the doors to every possibility in film viewing, film exhibiton, film curating, film appreciation. He was also unfailingly generous, encouraging and supportive of so many young filmmakers, including me when I was just starting to make my first pictures. No doubt about it - the man was a giant."
More information on Amos Vogel can be found at http://www.filmlinc.com/blog/entry/amos-vogel-1921-2012 .
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, currently planning its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, 42BELOW, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.
