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B. Ruby Rich

B. Ruby Rich is an esteemed American scholar and critic renowned for her insights on independent, Latin American, documentary, and LGBTQ+ cinema. She serves as a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, specializing in Community Studies and Social Documentation, also known as "SocDoc," and has taught courses in documentary film and queer studies at UC Berkeley.

Rich's career in film began with her co-founding of the Woods Hole Film Society after completing her college education. She advanced to become the associate director of the Film Center at the Art Institute of Chicago. Following her tenure as a film critic for the Chicago Reader, she relocated to New York City, where she directed the film program for the New York State Council on the Arts for ten years.

A prominent cultural theorist since the mid-1970s, Rich is particularly recognized for her role in defining and advocating for feminist film criticism and for coining the term New Queer Cinema. Her contributions to film festivals, notably Sundance, her critiques in major publications, and her appearances on public broadcasting programs have solidified her as a key figure in what she describes as "cinefeminism."

Rich authored the influential 1998 book, *Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement*, which explores the evolution of feminist cinema through a blend of personal narrative and critical analysis. Her extensive writing has appeared in respected outlets such as the Village Voice, The Guardian, and Sight & Sound. Among her accolades, she received the Honorary Life Membership Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2006 and the Brudner Prize from Yale University in 2007. B. Ruby Rich resides in San Francisco, continuing to inspire new generations of film scholars and critics.

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