Amos Vogel – Revisited Edition of Film as a Subversive Art

Amos Vogel’s seminal book Film as a Subversive Art was first published in 1974 and, in Vogel’s own words, detailed, “the accelerating worldwide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored.”

It is now available again in this newly restored edition, in which hundreds of errors have been corrected. Accompanied by over three hundred rare film stills, newly sourced and re-scanned for this edition.

A guiding encyclopedia for film programmers and enthusiasts alike, Film as a Subversive Art illustratively catalogues more than 500 films Vogel came across as a programmer, principally through his and Marcia Vogel’s film club, Cinema 16 (1947-1963), and also as a co-founder of the New York Film Festival. The book also serves as a treatise on the revolutionary potential of cinema: its ability to change consciousness, reflect the human condition, and subvert the status quo.

In Paul Cronin’s 2004 documentary, Film as a Subversive Art: Amos Vogel and Cinema 16, Vogel states his definition of the word subversive as “anything that changes or undermines previous ways of thinking and feeling. Subversive art makes you look at things in a new and very different way. It disrupts. It destroys, and thereby builds up new realities and new truths.”