Rebecca Meyers named director of film programs

Starting this fall, Emerson’s new 170–seat Bright Family Screening Room at the Paramount Center will be programmed by Rebecca Meyers. The Paramount Center also houses the 590-seat main Theatre and the 150-seat Black Box Theatre.

As ArtsEmerson’s newly minted director of film programs, Meyers plans to program films related to the live performing arts series previously announced by ArtsEmerson, as well as other independent, repertory and foreign films, a student-curated series, classics, and regular screenings of films for children. Schedule details and pricing will be announced in the coming weeks, and will be available at artsemerson.org.

“Rebecca Meyers brings a wealth of experience and a range of interests to this position. As with the work on our stages, we want the films we program to add to the cultural choices for the community.”

–Emerson’s Executive Director for the Arts Robert Orchard

“Rebecca Meyers brings a wealth of experience and a range of interests to this position,” said Emerson’s Executive Director for the Arts Robert Orchard. “As with the work on our stages, we want the films we program to add to the cultural choices for the community.”

Meyers is a filmmaker and programmer who serves as associate director of Studio7Arts, a Cambridge studio that produces nonfiction films and other media. Until 2009, she worked at the Harvard Film Archive as an archive coordinator. She has been making 16mm films since her graduate studies at the University of Iowa, and has screened internationally at festivals and museums. The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston will exhibit her films this fall in its exhibition of the 2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize finalists; and her new film, Blue Mantle, will have its world premiere in the Wavelengths program at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Meyers has been involved with nonprofit arts organizations since her days in Iowa City, when she worked as a programmer for the Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media and the monthly screening series Light Reading, which she founded. She served for three years as co-programmer of Chicago’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival and has curated film programs for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Massachusetts College of Art Film Society, Brooklyn’s Light Industry, and the Harvard Film Archive. She has taught film production at Emerson College and Columbia College in Chicago. She was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in 2009.

Pictured from left to right: Emerson’s Executive Director of the Arts Rob Orchard, Director of Film Programs Rebecca Meyers, Executive Artist-in-Residence Kevin Bright, and Director of Music Programs Dan Hirsch