Doug Jones, a veteran film programmer, curator and exhibitor at several US film festivals, has died. He was 53.
Jones most recently worked as a consulting programmer for the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival, as well as a programmer for the Vidiots Foundation, a revamped nonprofit video store and cinema in Los Angeles.
The Vidiots Foundation confirmed his death in an Instagram post: “It breaks our hearts to share that we have lost the great and wonderful Doug Jones, a beloved and indispensable member of the Vidiots family and a cornerstone of the global film programming community.”
From 2014 to 2022, he served as executive director of Images Cinema, a single-screen non-profit art house in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He spent 12 years at the Los Angeles Film Festival and Film Independent from 2002, specialising in identifying new independent filmmakers and producing major film events, and became associate director of programming in 2009.
His passion for film has taken him across the country, from working in the Twin Cities film scene under Al Milgrom at the U Film Society to programming positions at the Oak Street Cinema in Minneapolis and the Philadelphia Film Festival. He contributed to South by Southwest as a screener for over a decade. Jones was also a founding member of the Cinema Eye Honors nominating committee and served as artistic director of the genre-focused Overlook Film Festival.
After moving to San Francisco the previous year, he joined the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1995, working his way up from print traffic coordinator to full-time associate programmer. He has also programmed for the San Francisco Film Society and curated films for San Francisco’s Red Vic Movie House, the Noise Pop Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.
His film writing and festival coverage has appeared in publications including IndieWire, Twitch Film and Film Comment.
Born in Boulder, Colo. and raised in South Dakota and Minnesota, Jones graduated from Metropolitan State University with a degree in film studies. Prior to his career in film programming, he worked in movie theatres throughout the Midwest.
Jones was preceded in death by his wife, Paula Buxbaum, and is survived by his son, William, his mother, Judy, and his sister, Kathy, as well as his extended family, friends and colleagues.
