Bio
For more than three decades as a film and visual art curator, programmer, journalist, and executive, Noah Cowan was a vital and pioneering champion for individual filmmakers as well as global film culture more broadly. As a festival programmer and prodigious spotter of new artistic talent, he curated the work of acclaimed international auteurs at the earliest moments of their careers. He was a rare curator who also worked in film distribution, founding companies—both for-profit and non-profit—that launched directorial careers and connected audiences to vital work they would not have discovered otherwise. As a critical writer and journalist, Cowan provided an intellectual framework for the greater understanding of new global cinema talents, as well as the ways in which film festivals seed that talent for critics and audiences. He was also an important mentor to today’s younger generation of LGBTQ+ writers, critics, and curators. Finally, as a non-profit executive, he rethought the ways in which exhibition needs to change in the 21st century.
Cowan began his career at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1989 as a programmer for the Midnight Madness program, which remains one of the Festival’s most popular offerings. He subsequently curated major national cinema retrospectives on India and Japan for the organization, becoming a recognized new voice in contemporary international film programming by the mid-1990s.
In 1993, Cowan started Cowboy Pictures, an influential distributor that successfully launched artistically groundbreaking pictures—often by first-time filmmakers—that other distributors were too timid to take on. Throughout Cowboy’s history, the company’s films received awards from the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York Film Critics Circle, as well as Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, and numerous film festival prizes. For two years, Cowboy programmed The Screening Room, New York City’s downtown exhibitor; it also collaborated with Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder label, bringing back the midnight movie experience for a new generation. Throughout the ’90s, Cowan was also Filmmaker magazine’s chief festival correspondent and a contributing editor, during which time his vibrant, ferociously astute articles covered not only the films but were also meditations on the proper role of festivals as the 21st century beckoned.
In 2002, Cowan co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Global Film Initiative in New York City, a not-for-profit organization whose mission was to promote cross-cultural understanding through film. In partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, the foundation funded, acquired, distributed, and created educational material for socially meaningful cinema from the developing world.
Cowan returned to Toronto in 2004 and until 2008 was Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, where he initiated programs such as Future Projections, a citywide meeting of the visual arts and cinema, and collaborations with local organizations such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art).
Moving on within TIFF (the umbrella organization that presents the Festival), from 2008 to 2014 Cowan served as the inaugural artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox, where he was responsible for the newly built multi-purpose film venue and home of the organization’s creative vision. During his tenure, Cowan curated many critically acclaimed exhibitions and installations, including showcases of work by such diverse figures as director David Cronenberg, actor Grace Kelly, and visual artists Yang Fudong and Candice Breitz, as well as major retrospectives related to the history of Chinese cinema and the Indian superstar Raj Kapoor. He was also responsible for a large educational portfolio, including the TIFF Cinematheque, the TIFF Kids International Film Festival, several significant learning programs for students of all ages, and large-scale collaborations between film and visual arts institutions around the world.
In 2014, Cowan became Executive Director of SFFILM, San Francisco’s premiere film cultural institution and home of the San Francisco International Film Festival, a nationally recognized artist development initiative, and a high-impact local education program. He held the position for five years before moving to Los Angeles, where he launched a media consultancy company that allowed him to share his artistic knowledge and business acumen with non-profit, film festival, and venture capital clients around the world.
Among the hundreds of filmmakers Cowan championed throughout his career are Gregg Araki, Catherine Breillat, George Butler, Jem Cohen, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan, David Gordon Green, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Guy Maddin, Lucrecia Martel, Deepa Mehta, Michael Moore, Mani Ratnam, Boots Riley, Isabella Rossellini, Patricia Rozema, James Schamus, and Johnnie To.
Cowan died after a year-long battle with glioblastoma multiforme on January 25, 2023.
