Noah cowan biography
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He was also an important mentor to today’s younger generation of LGBTQ+ writers, critics, and curators. As a festival programmer and prodigious spotter of new artistic talent, he curated the work of acclaimed international auteurs at the earliest moments of their careers. 2236-224712 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Bio
For more than three decades as a film and visual art curator, programmer, journalist, and executive, Noah Cowan was a vital and pioneering champion for individual filmmakers as well as global film culture more broadly.
Finally, as a non-profit executive, he rethought the ways in which exhibition needs to change in the 21st century.
Cowan began his career at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1989 as a programmer for the Midnight Madness program, which remains one of the Festival’s most popular offerings. Try again later.
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Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access
Cerebellar reaching ataxia is exacerbated by timing demands and assistive interaction torques
Oh, K., Cao, D., Cowan, N. J.& Bastian, A. J., Dec 2025, In: Scientific reports.15, 1, 22129.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access
Echolocating bats adjust sonar call features and head/ear position as they track moving targets in the presence of clutter
Wikinson, M.G. T., Wang, X. Y., Cowan, N. J.& Moss, C., Mar 1 2025, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.157, 3, p.
In 2014, Cowan became Executive Director of SFFILM, San Francisco’s premiere film cultural institution and home of the San Francisco International Film Festival, a nationally recognized artist development initiative, and a high-impact local education program.
In 2002, Cowan co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Global Film Initiative in New York City, a not-for-profit organization whose mission was to promote cross-cultural understanding through film. Throughout the ’90s, Cowan was also Filmmaker magazine’s chief festival correspondent and a contributing editor, during which time his vibrant, ferociously astute articles covered not only the films but were also meditations on the proper role of festivals as the 21st century beckoned.
He subsequently curated major national cinema retrospectives on India and Japan for the organization, becoming a recognized new voice in contemporary international film programming by the mid-1990s.
In 1993, Cowan started Cowboy Pictures, an influential distributor that successfully launched artistically groundbreaking pictures—often by first-time filmmakers—that other distributors were too timid to take on.
Among the hundreds of filmmakers Cowan championed throughout his career are Gregg Araki, Catherine Breillat, George Butler, Jem Cohen, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan, David Gordon Green, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Guy Maddin, Lucrecia Martel, Deepa Mehta, Michael Moore, Mani Ratnam, Boots Riley, Isabella Rossellini, Patricia Rozema, James Schamus, and Johnnie To.
Cowan died after a year-long battle with glioblastoma multiforme on January 25, 2023.
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During his tenure, Cowan curated many critically acclaimed exhibitions and installations, including showcases of work by such diverse figures as director David Cronenberg, actor Grace Kelly, and visual artists Yang Fudong and Candice Breitz, as well as major retrospectives related to the history of Chinese cinema and the Indian superstar Raj Kapoor.He was a rare curator who also worked in film distribution, founding companies—both for-profit and non-profit—that launched directorial careers and connected audiences to vital work they would not have discovered otherwise. The ones marked * may be different from the article in the profile.
Co-authors
- Eric FortuneDepartment of Biological Sciences, New Jersey Institute of TechnologyVerified email at njit.edu
- Allison OkamuraRichard W.
Weiland Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford UniversityVerified email at stanford.edu
- Robert J. Webster IIIProfessor of Mechanical Eng. Electrical Eng., ENT, Neurosurgery, Urologic Surgery, and MedicineVerified email at vanderbilt.edu
- Mustafa Mert AnkaraliAssociate Professor, Electrical & Electronics Eng., Middle East Technical UniversityVerified email at metu.edu.tr
- Manu S MadhavAssistant Professor, University of British ColumbiaVerified email at ubc.ca
- Eatai RothAssistant Professor, Indiana UniversityVerified email at iu.edu
- Gregory ChirikjianWillis F.
Harrington Professor, University of DelawareVerified email at udel.edu
- Robert J. FullUniversity of California at BerkeleyVerified email at berkeley.edu
- Jusuk LeeAssociate Specialist, UCSFVerified email at ucsf.edu
- John SwensenAssistant Professor, Washington State UniversityVerified email at wsu.edu
- Kyle ReedUniversity of South FloridaVerified email at usf.edu
- Alican DemirJohns Hopkins UniversityVerified email at jhu.edu
- Ismail UyanikHacettepe UniversityVerified email at ee.hacettepe.edu.tr
- Ken GoldbergProfessor, UC Berkeley and UCSFVerified email at berkeley.edu
- Ron AlterovitzDistinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillVerified email at cs.unc.edu
Allothetic and idiothetic spatial cues control the multiplexed theta phase coding of place cells
Sueoka, Y., Jayakumar, R.P., Madhav, M. S., Savelli, F., Cowan, N. J.& Knierim, J. J., Oct 2025, In: Nature neuroscience.28, 10, p.
In partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, the foundation funded, acquired, distributed, and created educational material for socially meaningful cinema from the developing world.
Cowan returned to Toronto in 2004 and until 2008 was Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, where he initiated programs such as Future Projections, a citywide meeting of the visual arts and cinema, and collaborations with local organizations such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art).
Moving on within TIFF (the umbrella organization that presents the Festival), from 2008 to 2014 Cowan served as the inaugural artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox, where he was responsible for the newly built multi-purpose film venue and home of the organization’s creative vision.
As a critical writer and journalist, Cowan provided an intellectual framework for the greater understanding of new global cinema talents, as well as the ways in which film festivals seed that talent for critics and audiences. For two years, Cowboy programmed The Screening Room, New York City’s downtown exhibitor; it also collaborated with Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder label, bringing back the midnight movie experience for a new generation.
He held the position for five years before moving to Los Angeles, where he launched a media consultancy company that allowed him to share his artistic knowledge and business acumen with non-profit, film festival, and venture capital clients around the world.