National Gallery Of Art | Audio

Scott MacDonald, visiting professor of art history, Hamilton College. From the fall of 1947 until the spring of 1963, New York City was invigorated by Cinema 16, the most successful and influential film society in American history. Established by Amos and Marcia Vogel, and directed by Vogel, Cinema 16 offered its audiences monthly film programs of great diversity and considerable intellectual and emotional challenge. At its height, Cinema 16 boasted 8,000 members, including many of the movers and shakers of the New York cultural scene, who came to see films that were unavailable or illegal to show outside the parameters of a membership film society. In this Rajiv Vaidya Memorial Lecture recorded on December 7, 2014, Scott MacDonald, film historian and author of Cinema 16: Documents toward a History of the Film Society, presents a program of films that were crucial for Cinema 16 audiences—organized so as to evoke the unusually challenging programming strategy Amos Vogel developed. The following films were scre