Amos Poe, the groundbreaking experimental filmmaker who documented the birth of punk rock in New York, has died. He was 76.
The Blank Generation co-writer/co-director’s wife Claudia Summers and daughter Lisa Poe announced his death on Christmas Day with a social media post, following his stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis in 2022, for which he underwent chemotherapy.
“Amos took his last breath today at 3:33pm, surrounded by loved ones,” Summers captioned the Instagram post. “‘Adios’ — AP”
Daughter Emily Poe wrote on Facebook, “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.”
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Born Sept. 30, 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Poe was based in New York City, where he was part of the Lower East Side’s ‘No Wave Cinema’ movement in the 1970s and ’80s.
Poe’s seminal works include The Blank Generation (1976), The Foreigner (1978) and Subway Riders (1981). A seminal early DIY title in the punk film movement that originally premiered at CBGB, Poe made The Blank Generation with Ivan Král, named one of the Top 10 greatest punk movies by Rolling Stone.
“Our whole esthetic, or the way we approached it, was that you didn’t necessarily have to have the professionalism or the understanding of making films, you had to have the inspiration and the will to put yourself completely into it,” he once told Reuters.
In 2020, Poe lost his copyright interest in The Black Generation to Král after a falling-out in their creative relationship led to a lawsuit.