From Sundance director to head of Film Forum

Tabitha Jackson, 55, took over this week as director of Film Forum, the nonprofit art-house cinema in Greenwich Village. She first began coming to the theater in the 1990s after growing up in a village in rural England where the nearest cinema was a 30-minute drive away.

Jackson led the Sundance Film Festival from 2020 to 2022, steering the event through its first mostly online editions, and previously directed the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program for six years. Since leaving Sundance she has pursued fellowships at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the MIT Open Documentary Lab, which she is still completing; she described that period as a “creative reset.” She said her priority is to ensure Film Forum continues its mission while finding ways to expand its audience and support staff.

Jackson noted the theater’s public service role: nearly half the documentaries that have premiered there in recent years have lacked distribution.

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