MIKE MAGGIORE
Film Forum, under your artistic leadership, is one of the great homes for independent and documentary cinema in America. Mike understands that where a film screens, and how it's presented, and who is invited into the room, is itself a political act.
He started working at Film Forum in 1994, just two years before Aubin was established as a nonprofit film and impact production company. He's watched hundreds of films a year, choosing only a handful, the ones that break the rules, that take on social and political realities of their moment without flinching.
His commitment to serious, demanding, transformative work builds an audience for films like ours. He's premiered four of our films: Born to Fly, with Elizabeth Streb and her dancers in the house; Chavela, bringing a queer icon's voice to New York; Aggie, which opened its run in the hardest months of the pandemic and found its audience anyway; and most recently Paint Me a Road Out of Here, carrying Faith Ringgold's painting and its fifty-year journey out of Rikers Island into the light. His embrace always establishes the conversations, the dialogue that we filmmakers need to make meaning of our work.
He's the infrastructure of serious US and international film culture, which allows filmmakers to keep experimenting, exploring, and having adventures as we create adventures for others.
We're honored to count him among our 30 Luminaries and to celebrate his decades of programming that make such a huge a difference.