Cast Commentary

Get to know the “cast” here at the Jacob Burns Film Center: the employees, volunteers, and interns who make it possible to bring over 400 films a year to the community.

With Elizabeth Garrigue, Membership Director

What about your job do you find most satisfying?

Interacting with people who love the Burns or who have just learned about us. It’s fun to share experiences or opinions about films with members, run into them at the theater, around town or at Target! And I love this place as much as they do so I love talking about all our amazing film programming here. It’s been wonderful to meet so many people through the film center and make new friends!

What about working at the JBFC might people find surprising?

It’s very fast-paced here in the office – lots of great ideas, lots of details, lots of information flying around at a breakneck pace. I don’t think that our members, donors and audience members realize how much thought/planning/and agonizing goes on over the how, the why and the details of everything we offer out to our community! We also have great staff competitive cook-offs – complete with judges, blind judging and prizes. And there’s just a lot of humor and fun that’s part of our culture here. It’s so great to work with smart, fun, creative people!

Talk about an important or influential experience in your life that sparked your interest in film/education/nonprofit work.

I was first exposed to some really interesting films during visits with my aunt in NYC as a young girl. She’d scour the reviews in The New Yorker, the Times and elsewhere and map out a plan with show times and we’d see several things over a school break – jaunting all over the city. It awakened a love of film in me; a love of travelling into other worlds and experiences through film. I still enjoy escaping for a couple of hours in a dark theater—perhaps coming out with greater insight into some new topic or a greater understanding of some part of the human experience. My love of film and the arts and a strong belief that the arts are key to a full experience of life help drive my work at the Burns and passion to work for an arts organization – I know how enlightening and broadening the arts can be and how the arts can bring people together as they share experiences.

What’s currently decorating your work space?

Gorgeous drawings by my daughter… some Cezanne postcards, funny postcard campaigns and mini posters we’ve done via our talented art department, a collage of pix of Clint Eastwood from a series we did years back, a graceful palm inherited by a former coworker, faded coffee spills…!

What’s the first movie you ever saw in a theater?

I think it was Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson accompanied by a short film re Bigfoot. I actually used to come to the Rome Theater!

If you could have a one-on-one dinner with anybody in the world—living or dead—who would it be?

There are so many interesting people… Woody Allen? William Shakespeare? Queen Elizabeth I? Emily Dickinson…