Film as a Subversive Art

I think it must be the most exciting and comprehensive book I’ve seen on avant-garde, underground and exceptional commercial film. A classic returns.

The original edition of Amos Vogel’s seminal book, Film as a Subversive Art was first published in 1974, and has been out of print since 1987. According to Vogel — founder of Cinema 16, North America’s legendary film society — the book details the “accelerating worldwide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored.”

Film as a Subversive Art analyses how aesthetic, sexual, and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing value systems and institutions. This subversion of form, as well as of content, is placed within the context of the contemporary world view of science, philosophy, and modern art, and is illuminated by a detailed examination of over 500 films.