Film Forum Director Karen Cooper To Step Down After 50 Years At Helm Of The NYC Indie Cinema; Deputy Director Sonya Chung To Succeed Her
deadline.comIn a major shift one of the nation’s premier arthouses, Karen Cooper will be exiting as director on June 30 after 50 years running the Film Forum in New York City.
Deputy Director Sonya Chung will assume the role. Cooper has led the nonprofit cinema since its first iteration in 1972 as a 50-seat loft space on the Upper West Side open only weekends, to a multi-million dollar operation with four screens and 500 seats in lower Manhattan.
She’ll remain an advisor to Chung with a focus on programming premieres and fundraising “To say this is a transitional moment would be a vast understatement – for virtually all of its history, Film Forum has been energetically and most ably guided by Karen, not least during the very challenging pandemic period from which we are emerging.
My board colleagues and I are extremely grateful for her tenure, and excited that in Sonya we have secured a very talented successor with her own long and productive history with the organization,” said Gray Coleman, chair of the Film Forum board.
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