[1] Born and raised on the East Coast of the United States, he was the only son of textile industry mogul and philanthropist Israel Rogosin.
Lionel Rogosin attended Yale University and obtained a degree in chemical engineering in order to join his father's business.
Concerned with political issues including racism and fascism, Rogosin participated in a United Nations film titled Out, a documentary about the plight of Hungarian refugees.
The newly formed Free Cinema in London, founded by Lindsay Anderson, Lorenza Mazzetti, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson, invited Rogosin for its second program.
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 distributing independent films in the United States, Rogosin purchased the Bleecker 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 as Miloš Forman and Francis Ford Coppola as well as many critics and cineastes.
He made Woodcutters of the Deep South about a black and white cooperative, and finally Arab-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.