Films
Film as a Subversive Art
Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (2003)
My Modest Intention A Showcase for the Nonfiction Film Avant-garde Film Cinema 16 Explained Film as a Subversive Art Cinema 16: a film society remembered Love, Death and Politics Life as a Subversive Art Time Out New York The Camera as Pen Dogs and Jews Film Society Primer Advice to Film Lovers Witness and Catalyst The Structuralist Incursion Mechanisms of Domination Projections for the Future The Execution The Pointer Moves Memory and Prevention Q and A: Amos Vogel Democracy: Manipulations and Possibilities Fields of Rain Singing Regardless of Weather Tremors of Recognition Brief story outline for a film concerning God
Fields of Rain
by Amos Vogel
One rainy afternoon, the young man, fatigued by his exertions to find common ground with his grandfather, indulgently reopened the ancient subject. It was a magnificent, terrifying one, sure to lead the other into lengthy reveries of horror, its shattering details recounted with precision. Kindly, indifferently, he asked the old man one again about his years in the camps.
The hold man, his eyes watering, came to life, moving his entire body in a stunted version of a spasm.
“The Camps…,’ he mumbled, uncertainly. “Yes…”
There was silence.
“The Camps…”
The young man waited respectfully. He had heard the stories many times and barely recalled them. They were of another time. Rain fell steadily, an accident of nature rather than a symbolic event.
“Yes…,” the old man said, “I remember… on the other side…”
He hesitated. “The fields…”
The young man, puzzled, suddenly connected. He had seen ‘the fields’ on a recent journey; they were all that was left of the camps; borders framing nothing. He recalled some stray vegetation, some empty soft-drink cans.
The hold man stopped in confusion. His mind wandered.
“The fields…,” he repeated tonelessly. He started through the windows at the sheets of rain.
Both sat in silence. For the first time, they were together. A way had been found to exorcise the unthinkable. One had never known, the other had forgotten. The present had arrived with a vengeance. It encompassed them for an instance (as presents must) and then instantaneously hurled them into the nameless past to share the fate of fields, camps and human misery.
© Amos Vogel, August 1981
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