Amos Vogel – 100 Years of Subversion
With his provocative assertion of film as a "subversive art," the curator, critic and indefatigable educator Amos Vogel (1921-2012)
violently challenged the common understanding of film, championing a cinematic cosmos rich with disapproved, forgotten, defiant
and censored works. In 2021, this figurehead of curatorial rebelliousness would have celebrated his centenary.
Amos Vogel was born on April 18, 1921 in Vienna as Amos Vogelbaum. In 1938, he fled via Cuba to the USA, where he lived in
New York City and Philadelphia until his death on April 24, 2012. He was the founder and curator of Cinema 16 (1947–1963),
one of the most significant film societies in the USA focusing on independent cinema; founding director of the New York Film
Festival (1963–1968), where he emphasized the contemporary avant-garde. He was also the author of the groundbreaking work
of film theory Film as a Subversive Art (1974); professor of film studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; lecturer,
critic, and consultant for numerous international film festivals.
Activities and Projects at the Austrian Film Museum
From January 2021
Exhibition: Seeing films is a way of thinking
2021 / Ongoing
100 birthday wishes for Amos Vogel
2021 / Ongoing
Discoveries from the Amos Vogel Library
Autumn 2021
On the importance of cultivating a sense for the value of disorder
Since 2018 / Ongoing
Hommage to Cinema 16:
Films you cannot see elsewhere
2008
Retrospective: Cinema and the "Sexual Liberation," 1963–1976
2021 / Ongoing
Reading material, comments and discoveries
Since 2019
Books, pamphlets and juvenilia
2021 / Ongoing
Talks, meetings and seminars
2014
Be Sand Not Oil. The Life and Work of Amos Vogel
2011
Film as a Subversive Art:
An Evening for Amos Vogel
1993
Departure into Uncertainty – Austrian Filmmakers in Emigration
Amos Vogel Projects by Friends
March 2021
Film Festival: Amos Vogel Retrospective
September 2018
Exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
October 2004
Life as Subversive Art, Viennale 2004
2011
Amos Vogel – Ein New Yorker Cineast aus Wien
Sticking Place
Film as a Subversive Art and Cinema 16
Columbia University
The Amos Vogel Papers at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Harvard Film Archive
Amos Vogel Annenberg
School for Communication
University of Pennsylvania
for Communication. Amos Vogel
as former Faculty Member
