Amos Poe, the experimental filmmaker whose raw, do-it-yourself films captured the emergence of New York’s punk rock scene and helped define the city’s underground cinema movement of the 1970s, has died. He was 76.
Poe died Christmas Day after complications from stage 4 colon cancer, his family said in social media posts. He was surrounded by loved ones.
“We said goodbye today to @amos.poe – and the world will never be the same. Thanks, Dad, for bringing so much light, love and laughter to the world,” daughter Emily Poe wrote on Facebook.
Born Sept. 30, 1949, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Poe later settled in New York City, where he became a central figure in the Lower East Side’s “No Wave Cinema” movement, a loose collective of artists who rejected traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of spontaneity, minimal budgets and personal expression.
Poe is best known as the co-writer and co-director of “The Blank Generation,” a gritty, black-and-white portrait of the city’s nascent punk scene. Shot largely inside the legendary club CBGB, the film featured early appearances by artists who would later become icons of the genre. The movie has since been cited by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest punk films ever made.
Other notable works include “The Foreigner” (1978) and “Subway Riders” (1981), films that further cemented Poe’s reputation as a chronicler of urban alienation and underground culture.
“Our whole aesthetic was that you didn’t need professionalism — you needed inspiration and the will to put yourself completely into it,” Poe told Reuters in a past interview.
In later years, Poe’s legacy became entangled in a legal dispute with his “Blank Generation” collaborator Ivan Král, resulting in Poe losing his copyright interest in the film in 2020.
Despite that setback, Poe remained a revered figure among independent filmmakers and punk historians, remembered for capturing a moment when art, music and rebellion collided in lower Manhattan.
He is survived by his wife, Claudia Summers, and his daughters.
