Joanne Koch Dies: Emeritus Executive Director Of Film At Lincoln Center Was 92

Armando Tinoco
·2 min read

Joanne Koch, emeritus executive director and member of the Board of Trustees of Film At Lincoln Center, has died. She was 92. Koch was an influential figure in the culture of cinema in New York and ran Film at Lincoln Center, as it is known now, for 32 years from 1971 to 2003.

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Koch died on Tuesday, August 16, according to Film at Lincoln Center who retweeted a story published by THR and was first to report the story.

The cinema connoisseur stepped down from her position at Film at Lincoln Center back in 2003 after a long tenure where she helped launch New York Film Festival’s New Directors/New Films Festival in 1972. She was also the publisher of Film Comment magazine and co-produced 19 of the Chaplin Award galas that paid tribute to legendary film artists.

At the time she left her position at Film at Lincoln Center she said in a statement, “I am pleased to be turning over the management of the Film Society at a time when it is thriving as never before and am delighted that the organization will be in such highly capable and experienced hands.”

Koch was a proponent of having programming year-round and pushed for the launch of the New Directors/New Films back in 1972.

“My predecessor Gerald Freund got a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for $15,000 to show films in prisons,” Koch told Variety in an interview in 2019. “But the city wasn’t that interested, and it never took off, so the foundation agreed to let us use it for [New Directors/New Films]. We couldn’t afford to do it in Lincoln Center’s halls, so I contacted Willard Van Dyke at MoMA, where I had worked, about collaborating.”

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