As a film programmer who recently made the painful but necessary decision to quit the organization at which I’d worked for 11 years, you might expect me to have a dim view of contemporary film culture. I don’t. Quite the contrary: I feel strongly that this is one of the great watershed moments in the history of cinema. Some of the reasons for my optimism are personal, but most can be generalized.  Working more than a decade for a regional film festival that gradually entered the national discussion around independent film, I became increasingly aware of an alarming divide. On […]