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Lionel Rogosin | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 22, 1924 New York City, New York, United States |
| Died | December 8, 2000(2000-12-08) (aged 76) Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Occupation | Filmmaker |
| Spouse | Elinor Rogosin (m. 1956; div.) |
| Parent | Israel Rogosin (father) Evelyn Rogosin (mother) |
Lionel Rogosin (January 22, 1924,New York City, New York – December 8, 2000,Los Angeles, California) was an independent American filmmaker.[1][2] He worked inpolitical cinema, non-fictionpartisan filmmaking anddocufiction, influenced byItalian neorealism andRobert Flaherty.[1]
Born and raised on the East Coast of the United States, he was the only son oftextile industry mogul and philanthropistIsrael Rogosin. Lionel Rogosin attended Yale University and obtained a degree inchemical engineering in order to join his father's business. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. Upon his return, he spent his free time traveling in war-ridden Eastern Europe and Western Europe and Israel as well as a trip to Africa in 1948. He then worked in his father's company until 1954, while teaching himself film with a 16mmBolex camera. Concerned with political issues includingracism and fascism, Rogosin participated in aUnited Nations film titledOut, a documentary about the plight of Hungarianrefugees.[2]
At this juncture, Rogosin devoted himself to promoting peace and confronting issues such asnuclear war,imperialism, and racism.Apartheid was his first target, but in order to make a film against it, he decided to learn by filming theBowery, New York'sskid row, an effort influenced by the documentaries ofRobert J. Flaherty. Thus he madeOn the Bowery in 1955-1956 in the tradition ofneo-realism. The film was the first American film to receive the Grand Prize for Documentary at theVenice Film Festival in 1956.It also received aBritish Academy Film Award in 1956, and was nominated for anAcademy Award. It is also in 1956 that he and Elinor Hart who became a dance critic got married.[3]
On the Bowery received critical acclaim and made a great impression in Eastern Europe and England. The newly formedFree Cinema in London, founded byLindsay Anderson,Lorenza Mazzetti,Karel Reisz, andTony Richardson, invited Rogosin for its second program.
Turning to the struggle against Apartheid, Rogosin, with a small crew and under the pretense of making a commercial film onAfrican music, clandestinely documented the life of a black South Africanmigrant worker in Johannesburg. Completed in 1958 with nonprofessional actors and a young African singer namedMiriam Makeba,Come Back, Africa[1] won the Critics' Film Award at theVenice Film Festival. Rogosin arranged for Makeba to leave South Africa by bribing officials. He placed her under contract and arranged her first appearance on American television, onThe Steve Allen Show. Rogosin supported Makeba financially, paying for her trip and living expenses when she left South Africa and traveled throughout Europe and the United States.
Aware of the difficulties of distributingindependent films in the United States, Rogosin purchased theBleecker Street Cinema in New York City in 1960. The Bleecker became one of the most important independent art houses in New York,[3] [along with the New Yorker and the Thalia] and a form of cinema university for emerging filmmakers such asMiloš Forman andFrancis Ford Coppola as well as many critics and cineastes. In the same period, he was a founding and active member of the New American Cinema movement andThe Film-Makers' Cooperative, along withJonas andAdolfas Mekas,Shirley Clarke,Robert Downey Sr. and many others, whose films were shown at the Bleecker Street Cinema. Lionel Rogosin also helped Jonas Mekas financially set up theAnthology Film Archives.
Between 1960 and 1965, Rogosin traveled the world to gather material for his antinuclear war filmGood Times, Wonderful Times, which was presented as the British entry at the Venice Film Festival in 1965. It was also shown at many American universities during the Vietnam War. Rogosin foundedImpact Films in 1965 to distribute many political and independent films. The same year, Rogosin organized, along with others includingBertrand Russell, the British Artists' Protest, in August 1965, and the European Artists' Protest, in December 1965, against the Vietnam War.
In 1966, he tried his hand at comedy by filming two short, low-budget films calledHow Do You Like Them Bananas andOysters Are in Season while running the Bleecker Street Cinema and Impact Films.
In the 1970s, with rising financial difficulties, Rogosin made low-budget films supported by European television stations. Two of them,Black Roots andBlack Fantasy, dealt with economic and social hardships faced by African-Americans. He madeWoodcutters of the Deep South about a black and whitecooperative, and finallyArab-Israeli Dialogue, an attempt to give a voice and meeting ground to both parties through a discussion between a Palestinian poet,Rashid Hussein and an Israeli journalist,Amos Kenan.
Rogosin sold the Bleecker Street Theater in 1974 and brought Impact Films to an end in 1978. Though he continued to develop many film projects on subjects such asNavajo Indians, police brutality,Paul Gauguin, and a musical aboutstreet children in Brazil, he never was able to raise enough money to film them. Despite critical success in Europe and among other American independent filmmakers, he was by and large neither recognized nor supported in the US. He moved to England in the 1980s where he turned to writing. With his health deteriorating, he went back to Los Angeles in the late 1990s.
He died in Los Angeles in December 2000. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.
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