California Institute of the Arts mourns the death of longtime School of Film/Video faculty Bérénice Reynaud on Sunday, Sept. 17 after a multiyear battle with cancer.

A curator, critic and author, Reynaud taught in the CalArts School of Film/Video for more than 30 years with a brilliant, rigorous relationship to cinema that influenced generations of students. She was fiercely intelligent, loving and a tireless advocate for the filmmakers, activists and rebels that made up both her local and global family.

Reynaud often said that teaching brought her the most joy in her life. Her students and colleagues meant everything to her. She was thoroughly dedicated to her work at CalArts, a passion that kept her fighting through many years of difficult treatments.

Born and raised in France, Reynaud studied philosophy at Paris I-Sorbonne, cinema studies at NYU and was a Helena Rubenstein fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program. She was the author of “New Chinas/New Cinemas” (1999) and “Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A City of Sadness” (2002). A regular contributor to Senses of Cinema, she also published in Cahiers du cinéma, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Afterimage, Le Monde diplomatique and Cinemaya the Asian Film Quarterly, among many other journals, scholarly publications, encyclopedias and catalog articles.

As a correspondent for the San Sebastian International Film Festival and the Viennale and board member of Filmforum LA, Reynaud was a central figure in the Los Angeles and international independent film communities, watching everything with an omnivorous curiosity, always finding joy in discovering new artists and championing their work. In the 1980s, she developed a deep interest in Chinese cinema, was a pioneer of the introduction of Chinese video art and documentary in the United States and France, and for many years served as Curatorial Adviser and member of the Programming Committee for the China Onscreen Biennial. In 2017, she curated a major retrospective of contemporary Chinese cinema for the Cinémathèque française.

Reynaud was the founding co-curator, with Steve Anker, of the Film at REDCAT series from its inception in 2003. Together, Reynaud and Anker curated several hundred programs of work by international, documentary, narrative, and experimental media artists.

Reynaud was especially dedicated to including underrepresented filmmakers, showing work by dozens of queer artists and artists of color, expanding the breadth and reach of Film at REDCAT. Following Anker’s retirement, she continued curating the series with great innovation with Thomas Eduardo (2020-2021) and Jheanelle Brown (since 2022). Reynaud’s passion and determination were essential factors in making REDCAT a key part of Los Angeles’ vibrant independent media culture.

As a curator, Reynaud also created exhibitions for Artists Space, The Collective for Living Cinema, MOMA, Museum of the Moving Image, UCLA Film & Television Archives, Cinémathèque française, and Festival d’Automne and the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume. She was one of the main organizers of Against Oblivion, the Chantal Akerman retrospective that took place in several Los Angeles venues and at New York’s BAM in 2016 and edited the Senses of Cinema dossier devoted to Akerman.

Reynaud’s teaching and mentoring was always timely and thoughtful. She played a key role in bringing students in direct conversation with such esteemed filmmakers as Agnes Varda, Isaac Julien, Chantal Akerman, Julie Dash and many, many more. In response to the COVID quarantine, she quickly designed The Room, a seminar on confinement that was both a provocation and an invitation to students to think deeply about the moment. This summer, she was planning “Fourteen Questions for Jean-Luc Godard,” a deep dive into the filmmaker’s work following his death last year.

More information about a remembrance event for Reynaud’s enormous community will be released when available.