The Film Society of Lincoln Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Thomas Beard as Programmer at Large. Beard will work alongside Director of Programming Dennis Lim, Associate Director of Programming Florence Almozini, Assistant Programmer Dan Sullivan, and Programmer at Large Rachael Rakes on festivals, series, and special events throughout the year.
“Thomas is one of the most imaginative and knowledgeable film programmers working today, and he’s already done a tremendous amount to enrich and enliven film culture in New York City through his endeavors at Light Industry and elsewhere,” said Lim. “I have no doubt that our programming will benefit from his passion and expertise, and I’m delighted to have him as part of the team.”
As Programmer at Large, Beard will work on a number of Film Society series throughout the year, the first of which, coming this April, will be the most comprehensive survey ever assembled of queer cinema before Stonewall. The popular understanding of gay and lesbian film prior to that pivotal moment in 1969 is typically one of censorship and subtext, of sad young men and Dietrich in a tuxedo. By contrast, this series will make a very different kind of argument, and from a number of different perspectives, considering homophile auteurs in classical Hollywood, documentaries, home movies, and physique films alongside radical formal experiments and lavender touchstones like Mädchen in Uniform. Moving from cinema’s first moments to the cusp of liberation, this pre-Stonewall program aims to reveal the terrain of early queer cinema as far vaster and varied than received histories might suggest.
Thomas Beard is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn. He has organized screenings for Artists Space, BAMcinématek, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, and Tate Modern. He also co-curated the film programs for the 2012 Whitney Biennial and Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1. His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer, Film Comment, frieze, Texte zur Kunst, and Triple Canopy. He teaches in the Art Writing MFA program at the School of Visual Arts and is currently coordinating an international tour of films by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and curating a film program for the upcoming exhibition Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
