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). In 1999, on the occasion of the Guggenheim Museum's presentation of all of his surviving films in versions restored by the Academy Film Archive, initiated by the Estate Project, Lisa Katzman observed in the "New York Times" that "the films of Sonbert's mature period seem to contain multiple worlds ... In his editing, the images took on a new life; uncoupled from literal meanings and quotidian contexts, they became notes or colors ... Like the Russian montage master Dziga Vertov, Sonbert saw film as a language, and his work demands to be read ... While it is not always possible to grasp the exact psychological or emotional nuance he had in mind while constructing his 'arguments,' as Sonbert once called his films, their sensual appeal can be overpowering." Retrospectives of his work have since been held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000), the Centre Pompidou (2002), the Austrian Filmmuseum (2005), the Harvard Film Archive (2008), the Tate Modern (2013), and the Belgian Cinematek (2015).