Canyon Cinema Welcomes Three New Board Members

Posted June 28th, 2022 in Announcements, News / Events

Canyon Cinema is thrilled to welcome three new members to its Board of Directors: Terri Francis, Lian Ladia, and Patricia Ledesma Villon. Each of these new Board members, who will begin serving in July, brings with them a wealth of experience, unique perspectives, and an abiding commitment to the field of artist-made cinema and media. We also thank our outgoing Board members Antonella Bonfanti, Max Goldberg, and Rebecca Meyers for their outstanding contributions, guidance, and years of service to Canyon Cinema.

Meet our new Board members:

Terri Francis is the author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism and Associate Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. From 2017 to 2021, Dr. Francis directed the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University where she championed independent, experimental, and noncommercial films through screenings, acquisitions, and scholarship. She guest-edited a special section of Afrosurrealism in Film & Video for Black Camera in 2013 and she has published articles engaging the work of Cheryl Dunye, Christopher Harris, and Ja’Tovia Gary in anthologies and journals. In 2019 she co-curated Rough and Unequal: A Film by Kevin Jerome Everson with Betsy Stirratt, and in 2021 they published an exhibition catalog of essays, conversations, and photographs in dialogue with the 16mm installation. Dr. Francis serves on the editorial board of the Journal for Cinema and Media Studies and she is a Contributing Editor for Film Quarterly. Her essays on black film and performance appear in Salon, LitHub, and Mubi Notebook.

Lian Ladia is a curator and organizer. She is currently Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at The David Ireland House in 500 Capp Street, San Francisco. Ladia holds a Postbaccalaureate in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College, and in 2015, participated in De Appel’s Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam, co-curating works by Metahaven, Lav Diaz, and Wu Tsang, among others. From 2010 to 2015 Ladia was based in Southeast Asia, co-founding the curatorial collaborative Planting Rice and working with artist-run Green Papaya Art Projects. She was also co-curator for Japan Foundation’s Media/Art Kitchen, researching projects in Southeast Asia and Japan. Her recent curatorial projects involve the first US exhibition of film collaborative Zakkubalan and the presentation of their collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Apart from Ladia’s work with time-based media she actively organizes community engagement with critical issues on art, hxstory, and archives leading to community empowerment. She has contributed to the presentation of Carlos Villa’s work at the Singapore Biennale, the urban renewal and social justice archives of SOMA immigrant organizations, as well as the accessibility of archives in conceptual art at The 500 Capp Street Foundation through newly formed artist residencies. Ladia is a board member of Clarion Alley Mural Projects, People Power Media, and is part of the San Francisco Art Commission’s Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee.

Patricia Ledesma Villon is an archivist and librarian. She has processed audiovisual collections for the Center for Asian American Media’s “Memories to Light” home movie project, filmmaker and scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha, and the Philippine Film Archive. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she holds a B.A. in Media Studies from UC Berkeley and is a graduate of UCLA’s MLIS program with a specialization in Media Archival Studies, where she did research on the role of commercial, archival, and artist-run film laboratories in the moving image archiving and preservation field. Ledesma Villon is also a curator and co-organizer for Light Field, an annual exhibition of recent and historical moving image art on film in the San Francisco Bay Area, an active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, and a member of Black Hole Collective Film Laboratory in Oakland, California.

Terri, Lian, and Patricia will join current Board members Michael Renov (President), Jeffrey Skoller (Treasurer), Brian L. Frye, Jonathan Marlow, Lynne Sachs, and Steve Seid in overseeing Canyon Cinema’s affairs and helping us achieve our mission. To learn more about Canyon Cinema’s Board of Directors, visit: https://canyoncinema.com/about/board-of-directors/