{"id":601537,"date":"2023-01-26T12:54:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/26\/noah-cowan-former-toronto-film-festival-director-and-indie-distributor-dies-at-55\/"},"modified":"2023-01-26T12:54:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T18:54:00","slug":"noah-cowan-former-toronto-film-festival-director-and-indie-distributor-dies-at-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/26\/noah-cowan-former-toronto-film-festival-director-and-indie-distributor-dies-at-55\/","title":{"rendered":"Noah Cowan, Former Toronto Film Festival Director and Indie Distributor, Dies at 55"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tNoah Cowan, a veteran film festival director and indie film specialty distributor, most recently with San Francisco International Film Festival, has died. He was 55. <\/p>\n

\n\tCowan passed away in Los Angeles on Jan. 25 after a battle with Glioblastoma multiforme that was first diagnosed in December 2021.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a career that began in 1981 as a summer volunteer working in the box office at the Toronto International Film Festival, Cowan went on to be a veteran film festival programmer and director, a curator of visual art and film-related exhibitions, a film distribution executive and a journalist covering international film festivals and other events.<\/p>\n

\n\tVeteran Hollywood producer James Schamus paid tribute to Cowan, insisting the indie film champion represented far more than his many job titles over a long career. \u201cHe was not simply one of the most important curators, institution builders, distributors, grantors, and festival heads of our era \u2013 although he was all these. And that\u2019s because in each of those jobs he took his institutional and personal prerogatives and mobilized them in the service of countless other careers and communities. He\u2019ll be sorely missed,\u201d Schamus said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on July 22, 1967, in Hamilton, Ontario, Cowan was educated at Toronto\u2019s Institute of Child Study and then the University of Toronto, before he completed a philosophy degree in Montreal in 1989. That same year, Cowan became a film programmer at TIFF, where he oversaw the Midnight Madness program of genre titles.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe went on to program films for Toronto from India and Japan during the early 1990s. As artistic director of Toronto, Cowan was responsible for the creative and artistic vision for the annual September festival and Bell Lightbox, TIFF\u2019s year-round home. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring his tenure, he curated exhibitions and installations, including showcases of work by such diverse figures as\u00a0David Cronenberg,\u00a0Grace Kelly\u00a0and visual artists\u00a0Yang Fudong\u00a0and\u00a0Candice Breitz, as well as major retrospectives related to the history of Chinese cinema and the Indian superstar\u00a0Raj Kapoor. He also was responsible for a large educational portfolio, including the TIFF Cinematheque, the TIFF Kids International Film Festival, several significant learning programs for students of all ages and large-scale collaborations between film and visual arts institutions around the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1993, Cowan launched Cowboy Pictures, an indie film distributor in New York City that supported first-time filmmakers. For two years, Cowboy programmed The Screening Room and collaborated with Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Rolling Thunder label.<\/p>\n

\n\tCowan also served as Filmmaker magazine\u2019s main festival correspondent and as a contributing editor. And in 2002, Cowan co-founded and worked as executive director of the Global Film Initiative in New York City, a not-for-profit organization aiming to promote cross-cultural understanding through film.<\/p>\n

\n\tCowan returned to Toronto in 2004 and until 2008 was co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival. Then, from 2008 to 2014 Cowan became artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox, working as a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 under then TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2014, Cowan left Canada again to become executive director of SFFILM in San Francisco, home of the San Francisco International Film Festival, a position he held for five years before moving to Los Angeles to launch a media consultancy company.<\/p>\n

\n\tCowan is survived by his husband, John O\u2019Rourke, \u00a0parents Nuala FitzGerald Cowan and Edgar Cowan, and brothers Brian FitzGerald and Tim FitzGerald. The family requests that remembrances can be made with contributions to The Museum of Modern Art\u2019s Department of Film and Toronto\u2019s Cinematheque. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Etan Vlessing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Noah Cowan, a veteran film festival director and indie film specialty distributor, most recently with San Francisco International Film Festival, has died. He was 55. Cowan passed away in Los Angeles on Jan. 25 after a battle with Glioblastoma multiforme that was first diagnosed in December 2021. During a career that began in 1981 as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":601538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91702,534,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cowan","category-financial","category-former"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}