The San Francisco Film Society, parent organization of the San Francisco International Film Festival, has named its fourth executive director in three years. Noah Cowan, a longtime programmer and executive at the Toronto International Film Festival and, for the last five years, artistic director of the cinema and exhibition space TIFF Bell Lightbox, officially takes the SFFS reins on March 3, 2014. He succeeds Ted Hope, an indie-film producer and distribution maven who left the post at the end of 2013 after 16 months.
Cowan expressed satisfaction with the Film Society’s flagship event in a phone interview Thursday morning, a welcome contrast to a faction of the SFFS board that has long yearned for the San Francisco International Film Festival to become a destination for Hollywood executives and stars. The Toronto native did cite the Bay Area’s epicurean bounty and technological innovation as elements he’d like to weave into Film Society programs. (More on that later in this post.)
“I think we should start by saying that the SFIFF is a really solid festival,” Cowan, 46, said. “It continues to show the right mix of artistically minded films from around the globe and red carpet premieres. It fits elegantly into the current calendar of festivals. There’s nothing broken here.”
Cowan has extensive experience programming Asian cinema, but his taste isn’t limited by geography or genre. One of his favorite films is Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story, which he’s seen some 25 times (discovering something new on every viewing). Cowan has a direction he’d like the SFIFF, which runs April 24-May 8, 2014, to go, but it doesn’t entail a rejiggering of the movie menu.

“This is a topic I’ve contended with most of my adult life: the future of film festivals, the values of film festivals,” he explains. “These are key questions because festivals feel like the most vibrant aspects of artistically minded cinematic life. In some ways it’s a matter of preference, and a matter of strategic decision-making. I just happen to think there are too many market-oriented festivals in the world and we’re relying on an old-fashioned model of how we buy and sell films. I’m more interested in festivals like Telluride in Colorado, San Sebastian in Spain, Yamagata documentary festival in Japan where you’re not marketing [the attraction of] seeing films first or seeing films in a business context or seeing the biggest movie stars, but you are being offered an environment to truly see cinema as part of a larger cultural conversation. You’re surrounded by writers, performing artists and musicians, and eating great food and drinking great wine, while talking about the incredible films you’ve seen. It feels like environments like that can inspire creativity and provide audiences with lasting value.”