A collection of New York’s finest film curators and programmers (Thomas Beard, Stuart Comer, Chrissie Iles, Dennis Lim) come together to jump-start a discussion (moderated by Jens Hoffmann) about engaging film audiences in the 21st century. With festivals, museums, galleries, and online platforms all presenting film in new and different ways, the medium finds itself at an exciting crossroads.

Panelists
Thomas Beard is the Founder and Director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic arts in Brooklyn. In addition to organizing screenings for Artists Space, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, and Tate Modern, he co-curated the cinema for Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1 and the film program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. He has contributed to Artforum, Film Comment, Texte zur Kunst, and Triple Canopy, and currently teaches in the Art Writing MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.

Stuart Comer is Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art. He oversees the department’s collection and acquisitions, and its program of exhibitions, events, and installations. He was a co-curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He was previously the founding curator of film at Tate Modern, London, where he oversaw film and video work for the collection and displays, and was a co-curator for the opening program of the Tanks at Tate Modern. He is the editor of Film and Video Art (Tate Publishing, 2009) and has contributed to several publications and numerous periodicals, including Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, Mousse, Parkett, and Art Review.

Chrissie Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of her specializations is film and video, and she is responsible for film and video acquisitions for the Whitney’s permanent collection. She has been presenting film works in galleries since the beginning of her career in England, and has curated three large film and video survey exhibitions. She has lectured and published widely on film and art, and has curated a large transhistorical thematic exhibition on the cinematic at the new Whitney that will open in October 2016.

Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is formerly the film editor at The Village Voice and a contributor to The New York Times. He is the author of David Lynch: The Man from Another Place (New Harvest, 2015) and has written for Artforum, Cinema Scope, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at Harvard, NYU, and the New School.

Moderator
Jens Hoffmann is Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Jewish Museum and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival. He has curated more than 50 exhibitions internationally since the late 1990s, including the 2nd San Juan Triennial (2009), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), and the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012-13). He was formerly the director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco (2007-12) and director of exhibitions and chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2003-7).