Graham Leggat, Former Executive Director from the Bay Area Film Society, Dies at 51

Graham Leggat, who walked lower as executive director from the Bay Area Film Society in This summer, died at his Bay Area home on August. 25 after an 18-month fight with cancer. He was 51.Related Subjects•Obituaries Leggat was hired professional director from the Film Society, which is definitely the annual Bay Area Worldwide Film Festival, in 2005. Throughout his tenure, the business's staff a lot more than tripled from 11 to 23, its operating budget increased from $two million to $six million, and it is membership rose by 98 percent as SFFS was changed from the two-week-a-year film festival producer right into a year-round cultural institution centered on exhibition, education and filmmaker services. "For pretty much six exciting and major years, Graham Leggat brought the Bay Area Film Society with irrepressible determination, dash and design," Pat McBaine, leader from the Film Society's board of company directors, stated. "His vision, leadership, passion, work ethic, tenacity, imagination and daring together with his colorful language and wicked Scottish spontaneity have indelibly marked our company having a valuable legacy and left it within the best shape -- creatively, organizationally and financially -- in the 54-year history." Under Leggat's leadership, the Film Society broadened into year-round programming and today presents an autumn season of seven focused festivals including Hong Kong Cinema, Taiwan Film Days, the NY/SF Worldwide Children's Film Festival, French Cinema Now, Cinema through the Bay, the Bay Area Worldwide Animation Festival and New Italian Cinema. On Sep. 1, the Bay Area Film Society New People Cinema will open a condition-of-the art 143-chair theater within the New People building in Bay Area's Japantown. Leggat was created March 12, 1960 in Epsom, Surrey to Scottish parents. His family immigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he attended senior high school. Getting discovered the Beat authors, and through them Zen Buddhism, Leggat headed to Northern California for college, where he attended Stanford College. Although he eventually graduated from Stanford, while students, he required a 3-year detour to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, where he analyzed to become Buddhist priest. He also gained an MA in British and inventive writing from Syracuse College in 1989. After graduation school, Leggat labored like a freelance journalist before landing his first film job dealing with Richard Herskowitz and Mary Fessenden at Cornell Cinema. As coordinator for that Central New You are able to Developers Group, he organized tests and conferences, curated film packages and arranged for filmmakers to tour exhibition venues throughout upstate New You are able to. Before joining the Film Society, Leggat held positions using the American Museum from the Moving Image, the Museum of contemporary Art and also the Film Society of Lincoln subsequently Center. He was the connect writer of Film Comment magazine, adding editor for Filmmaker magazine and writer for that New You are able to Daily News. His novel, Song of the Harmful Paradise, was released in 2007. In the 2009 Worldwide Film Festival Summit, Leggat received the Director Excellence Award, given to the film festival director that has made considerable contributions along with a lasting effect on his film festival and independent film, by having an focus on festival growth, new programs, business structure and overall vision. Leggat is made it by his parents Graham and Marilyn of Niagara Falls, Canada boy William and kids Vhary and Isabelle sister Alexandra Leggat of Toronto partner Diana Chiawen Lee former wife Ellen Hughes, mother of his kids and former wife Lillian Heard, mother of his boy. Instead of flowers, donations might be designed to the Bay Area Film Society. A memorial service, available to the general public, is planned for late September. Related Subjects Obituaries