Karen Cooper

For the Knots Landing character, see Karen MacKenzie.

Karen Cooper is the director of Film Forum, an independent cinema in New York. She has also been a member of many film festival juries and several funding panels. Her work was celebrated in 2010 by MoMA’s Department of Film.

Biography

Since 1972 Karen Cooper has been the director of Film Forum, presiding over the growth of the nonprofit New York City cinema from its early years as a 50-seat screening room to its present day operation: a 3-screen cinema, located in lower Manhattan, which is considered one of America's leading venues for new American independents and foreign art features.[1] It is also known for repertory programming (by Bruce Goldstein).

In addition to supervising the running of the cinema, Cooper, selects its New York premieres with Mike Maggiore.[2] During the 1970s she introduced the early films of the New German Cinema (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Werner Schroeter),[3] during the 1980s, such documentaries as The Atomic Cafe and Eyes on the Prize, and during the 1990s feature films by Allison Anders, Carl Franklin and Emir Kusturica, plus Matthew Barney's Cremaster series, and documentaries by Chris Marker, Frederick Wiseman, Albert Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Other directors whose films she has premiered include: Agnès Varda, Terence Davies, Heddy Honigmann, the Quay Brothers, Jan Svankmajer, Kelly Reichardt, Jessica Hausner, Volker Schlondorff, Jonathan Demme, Bruno Dumont, Leos Carax, Patricio Guzman, Bruce Weber, Michael Haneke, Asghar Farhadi, Rithy Panh, Nicolas Philibert, and Margarethe von Trotta.[2][4]

Cooper has been a member of film festival juries around the world, including those in Naples, Morelia (Mexico), Oberhausen, Leipzig, Vancouver, Sarajevo, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. She has received numerous awards including Brandeis University's Citation for Film, the New York Film Critics Special Award for Programming, New York Women in Film's MUSE Award and the Municipal Art Society's Certificate of Merit. In 1995 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Cooper has served on many funding panels including those of the National Endowment on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the NYS Council on the Arts. In 2010, the Museum of Modern Art presented a tribute to Cooper entitled "Karen Cooper Carte Blanche: 40 Years of Documentary Premieres at Film Forum."[5]

Cooper is a graduate of Smith College and lives in Greenwich Village with her husband, animator George Griffin. Their daughter, Nora Griffin (b. 1982), is a painter and writer.

References

  1. ↑ Anderson, Melissa (2 February 2010). "Film Forum's Karen Cooper on the Secret to Her Success". Village Voice. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  2. 1 2 Hoberman, J. (30 March 2010). "Blackbook: Film Forum". Departures. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  3. ↑ Van Gelder, Lawrence (18 July 1982). "She Champions the Cause of Independent Film". New York Times (New York). Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  4. ↑ Grimes, William (25 August 1992). "Derring-Do on the Screen and Off Brings Success for Film Forum". New York Times (New York). Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  5. ↑ "Karen Cooper Carte Blanche: 40 Years of Documentary Premieres at Film Forum". MOMA. 2010. Retrieved 5 March 2016.


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