ABOUT

Caryn Coleman is a New York-based film programmer and writer.

Caryn Coleman is the Director of Programming/Special Projects at Nitehawk Cinema where she programs the annual Nitehawk Shorts Festival, focuses on new releases of independent films (with an emphasis on horror and women filmmakers), and organizes the department’s special repertory screenings. Focusing on special partnerships, she’s worked with MoMA, Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute, The Film Foundation, New York Film Festival, Brooklyn Comedy Festival, frieze magazine, the Strand Bookstore, Shudder, and Planned Parenthood New York. 

In 2018, she founded the initiative, The Future of Film is Female, which provides funding to women filmmakers in production of a short film. The project expanded in the summer of 2018 with a two-year, seasonal screening series of contemporary films directed by women with the Museum of Modern Art.

Also a writer, Coleman founded the blog The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which received the 2012 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Art Writers Initiative grant, and was co-editor of the philosophy journal Incognitum Hactenus. In 2016, her essay “Get Me Out of Here: the solemn geography of women in horror film” was published in Harvard Design Magazine’s “Run For Cover” issue and her catalog essay for Diana Shpungin’s “Drawing of a House (Triptych)” was published by SiTE:LAB.

She has guest-curated exhibitions and artist film screenings for the DePaul Art Museum, Mark Moore Gallery, 2013 New York CAA conference, and the Power Plant Gallery. In 2015, she was guest lecturer and presented Contagious Allegories: Art. Film. Horror. Spectatorship. for the University of Oregon’s Connective Conversations supported by the Ford Family Foundation.

Previously, she was the Curator for the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts’ Art & Law Residency (2011 & 2012) and owned the art gallery sixspace in Los Angeles (2002-2008) / Chicago (1998-2000). She has worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and provided exhibition/publication research to Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery. In addition to founding the seminal art.blogging.la, her writings have appeared in Harvard Design Journal, Fangoria.com, OnepluseOne Journal, VICE.com, Brighton Photo Fringe, LUX, Rue Morgue, the Modernist, Art Review online, Beautiful Decay, and Los Angeles Weekly.

Coleman received her MFA in Curating, with distinction, from Goldsmiths College.

Contact: caryn@caryncoleman.com