By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER PROGRAMMER ROBERT KOEHLER RESIGNS DUE TO FAMILY HEALTH ISSUES

Posted Monday, March 4th, 2013 - Comments Off on FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER PROGRAMMER ROBERT KOEHLER RESIGNS DUE TO FAMILY HEALTH ISSUES
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DENNIS LIM NAMED NEW DIRECTOR OF CINEMATHEQUE PROGRAMMING

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW YORK (March 4, 2013) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center today announced the departure of Robert Koehler, and the appointment of critic and programmer Dennis Lim as Director of Cinematheque Programming.  Koehler will step down immediately and return to Los Angeles to focus on personal matters and requests that his family’s privacy be respected.

Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Executive Director Rose Kuo said, “Bob brought a lot of fresh new ideas and innovation to the Film Society during his tenure and we are sorry to see him go.  We wish him and his family well and send him our support during this challenging time. We will continue to move forward in a new direction while maintaining our commitment to excellence with the appointment of Dennis Lim as the new Director of Cinematheque Programming.  Dennis’ knowledge about our organization, his important contributions to film writing and his talent as a programmer make him an ideal partner and leader in the organization’s development and growth.”

On his departure Robert Koehler notes, “I am leaving the position of Director of Programming both with a sense of regret, particularly the feeling of personal separation from a wonderful staff and programming team, as well as absolute confidence, given the entrance of Dennis Lim, who has been a friend, colleague and fellow cinephile for several years and whom the Film Society is extraordinarily fortunate to have in a leadership role. I believe that we have laid a foundation for a new and exciting era at Film Society, and I also look forward to contributing in numerous capacities to the Film Society’s growth.”

As Director of Programming for the Cinematheque, Lim will oversee the year-round retrospectives, festivals and screening series. He will officially begin his new role at the Film Society on April 1.  Kent Jones, Director of Programming for the New York Film Festival, will expand his current duties and oversee all programming in the interim.

“I’m excited and honored to be joining an institution that has played a central role in the vitality of New York film culture and meant a great deal to me personally as a writer and a moviegoer,” said Dennis Lim. “I look forward to collaborating with Rose Kuo, Kent Jones, and the rest of the staff in developing a programming vision that both lives up to the illustrious history of the Film Society and opens new paths for its future.”

Dennis Lim has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times since 2006. His writing has also appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, and The Village Voice, where he was the film editor from 2000 to 2006. He is the founding editor of Moving Image Source, the online magazine of the Museum of Moving Image in New York, where he has also organized film series and retrospectives. He teaches in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism graduate program at New York University’s Journalism Institute, was the programmer of the 2010 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, and served on the New York Film Festival selection committee from 2009 to 2011. Lim is also completing a book for Amazon Publishing on David Lynch.

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER

Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Among its yearly programming of film festivals, film series and special events, the Film Society presents two film festivals in particular that annually attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, which just celebrated its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Sidney Poitier. FSLC presents its year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational and transmedia programs and specialty film releases at the famous Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stonehenge Partners, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon