CAFILM Board of Directors + In Memoriam

CAFILM BOARD OF DIRECTORS

WELLINGTON BOWLER KENNETH BROAD (President) RICHARD J. IDELL (Secretary) DANIEL KENYON AMY KEROES JACQUI LOPEZ JENNIFER COSLETT MACCREADY (Board Chair) KURT MOBLEY CATHY NOURAFSHAN MAGGIE O’DONNELL (Co -Vice President) JONATHAN PARKER (Co -Vice President) SUSAN SCHWARTZ DR. JOEL SKLAR JANN STANLEY ZACH ZEISLER (Treasurer)

FOUNDING BOARD RITA CAHILL MARK FISHKIN LOIS KOHL SHORE

EMERITUS BOARD ANN BREBNER (1923-2017) RITA CAHILL SID GANIS BRUCE KATZ (1947-2022) GARY MEYER GORDON RADLEY CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH HENRY TIMNICK

HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD HONORABLE BARBARA BOXER STEWART BOXER DRUSIE DAVIS JEFF FISHER PETER FLAXMAN ROBERT GREBER LINDA GRUBER PEGGY HAAS MICHAEL KLEIN ROXANNE KLEIN KC LAUCK ANDREW MCGUIRE MARY POLAND ERIC SCHWARTZ MICHAEL SCHWARTZ SKIP WHITNEY

IN MEMORIAM

Dear friends of the Calfiornia Film Institute we lost this year.

SHEILA BENSON Sheila Benson (1930-2022) was film critic at Mill Valley’s Pacific Sun when the fledgling Mill Valley Film Festival launched, until a few years later when the LA Times realized what a gem she was and brought her work to a national level. Sheila was that rare being, a lover of film and a true critic—not reviewer! Her life and work were informed by her take-no-prisoners intellect, her deep knowledge of cinema and literature, her brilliance, and her wily wit. She gave MVFF the amazing gift of its first quotable quote, that first year: “The little festival that could.” A great one, Sheila, much beloved in this community.

MARY HRIZE Mary Hrize (1946-2022) came to us in 2006 as a volunteer and quickly became a part of the fabric and heart of CAFILM. Mary was a gift to us all. She did it all, working at MVFF, spending hours in the office, and working countless receptions at our theaters. Mary’s grace and beautiful warm smile touched everyone she encountered. She was so loved and will be missed. BRUCE KATZ Entrepreneur, innovator, walker and founder of the Rockport Shoe Company and the Samuel Hubbard Shoe Company, Bruce Katz (1947-2022) was a long-time Board member of CAFILM, where his brilliant mind helped push us to consider ways that we might do or see things differently. It was through Bruce that the sailing yacht Juliet, an exquisitely built, 144-foot superyacht, came to be the location for two intimate, iconic MVFF-hosted parties at the Cannes Film Festival. This ketch perhaps embodied much that Bruce brought into the spheres of his life, harmonizing design, function, and technology into something both entirely new and entirely timeless, and driven by a love of life and its adventures.

JOHN KORTY John Korty (1936-2022) was a consummate independent filmmaker whose career encompassed myriad genres, from comedy and social drama to animation and documentary. He was a pioneer of Bay Area filmmaking, and his 1960s Stinson Beach studio directly inspired the “northern migrations” of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. The recipient of an Oscar® and multiple Emmys, this principled artist was honored at the first Mill Valley Film Festival in 1978 and in an extensive Rafael retrospective in 2011.