"Sonbert taught filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Bard College at various times, and regularly reviewed classical recordings and opera, as well as film, for periodicals including "The Advocate" and the "Bay Area Reporter" (writing initially under the name "Scottie Ferguson," borrowed from the obsessed protagonist of Hitchcock's film set in San Francisco, "Vertigo").During his career, there were retrospectives of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1983), the Berlin International Film Festival (1987), the Centre Pompidou (1987), and the Museum of Modern Art (1994).