By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Cohen Media Group Names Longtime Film Comment Editor Gavin Smith VP

Posted Thursday, February 18th, 2016 - Comments Off on Cohen Media Group Names Longtime Film Comment Editor Gavin Smith VP
Be Sociable, Share!
 New York, NY (February 18, 2016) – Charles S. Cohen, owner, Chairman/CEO of Cohen Media Group, today announced the appointment of Gavin Smith, the longtime editor of Film Comment, to the new position of Vice President, Cohen Media Group.  Smith will work alongside Charles S. Cohen and CMG’s Vice President and Archivist, Tim Lanza,  to seek out films to acquire for the Cohen Film Collection, currently comprised of over 800 landmark works by cinema giants.
Smith will collaborate in programming the repertory screen at the newly redesigned Quad and will also help create film series, filmmaker presentations and discussions.
The appointment of Smith will enhance the status of the Quad Cinema as the New York City home of classic, foreign, art-house and independent films. Cohen acquired the historic Greenwich Village movie house in 2014 and is in the process of renovating and modernizing it to present a wide range of new and vintage films.
For decades, Gavin Smith has been a highly respected figure in the film world, as critic and programmer. He joined the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1987 and began programming there in 1995. In 2000, he became the editor of Film Comment, the FSLC’s official publication and America’s leading magazine of film criticism. Under Smith’s leadership, Film Comment reemphasized cinema’s contemporary relevance while honoring its past with impassioned writing by such renowned critics as Amy Taubin, Kent Jones, Dave Kehr, Andrew Sarris and J. Hoberman, and instituted regular columns by such filmmakers as Alex Cox and Guy Maddin. Smith has worked in various capacities at FSLC for 28 years.
Charles S. Cohen said, “We are thrilled to bring a film figure of Gavin’s stature to our team. His expertise, taste and passion for cinema will be invaluable as we strive to make the new Quad Cinema a welcoming place for New York City’s filmgoers.”
The 800-plus-title Cohen Film Collection comprises landmark works by Buster Keaton, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock and many others cinema giants, and includes such wide-ranging titles as Intolerance, For Ever Mozart, The General, Jamaica Inn, Tristana and W.C. Fields’s shorts. Since acquiring this treasure-trove (formerly the Rohauer Collection), Cohen Media Group has embarked on a major ongoing restoration project, with new prints of key films receiving theatrical engagements prior to release in deluxe Blu-ray and DVD packages.
About Cohen Media Group (www.cohenmedia.net)
Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in MCN Curated Headlines, Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on Cohen Media Group Names Longtime Film Comment Editor Gavin Smith VP

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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