San Francisco Film Society Exec. Director, Graham Leggat, Passes Away at 51

I am subscribed to tons of mailing lists--lists that I've never even heard of or read, that some third-party affiliate has obtained my information for. I don't read most of my e-mail because so much of it is junk. But this morning I opened an e-mail sent from the San Francisco Film Society to film society members past and current, that said Graham Leggat, the executive director of the SF Film Society had died of cancer on Thursday. That news affected me more than I thought it would because I never knew Mr. Leggat. Yet his work spearheading the Film Society probably played a huge part in my film education.

Film Society screenings at the Castro, the Moma, and the Pacific Film Archives were my film school. As executive director of the Film Society, Leggat was responsible for all of the festivals that ran in the city throughout the year from 2005 to 2011--the Silent Film Festival, San Francisco's annual International Film Festival, the Frameline Film Festival, the Asian Film Festival...(I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more) and I went to many of them. I took notes. I dissected those films, I devoured them. When I think about when my real cinematic education began--by this, I mean my education AT the cinema, watching and studying movies projected in a theatre--it seems to coincide around the time Leggat was appointed executive director of the SF Film Society. And this is important, to me at least, because it demonstrates what Leggat was instrumental in achieving during his six years at the Film Society. He made the organization visible. It didn't seem like there was a film culture in San Francisco six years ago. Not to younger people anyway. Then all of a sudden, people like me cared about and knew when film society screenings were happening. They revamped their website, published a monthly newsletter (which I still receive and read even though I live in New York now), got top-notch filmmakers and actors like George Lucas, Spike Lee, Gena Rowlands, Werner Herzog and Gus Van Sant to speak at festival events. Currently, they distribute grants and provide resources to filmmakers to foster the city's homegrown talent. San Francisco as a shooting location doesn't seem like L.A. or New York's cool but ugly, cousin anymore. These aren't the singular achievements of one person, but Leggat had a hand in overseeing all of it. His passing is like the passing of a dean of a school at a university. The school of cinema, perhaps. I didn't know him, but he was responsible for the curriculum I was taught and I appreciate the education I received. R.I.P. Graham Leggat.