From Sundance Director to Head of Film Forum

Tabitha Jackson, 55, took over as the new director of Film Forum in Manhattan on Monday. She first fell in love with movies as a girl in a village in rural England, and her film career later led her to run the Sundance Film Festival from 2020 to 2022, guiding the event through its first mostly online editions.

She then embarked on a series of fellowships, including ones with Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Documentary Lab, the last of which she is still completing. Jackson said it had been "a creative reset" after directing the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program for six years.

At Film Forum she plans to ensure the organization continues its mission, overseeing programming without becoming involved in day-to-day selection work so she can think about the theater’s future role in the cultural landscape and understand its challenges and opportunities.

United States, Manhattan

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