JOANNE PARSONT

We are thrilled and delighted to welcome our new CFI Education Director, Joanne Parsont.

Joanne has been a part of our CFI family since 1996, when she coordinated the MVFF Children’s FilmFest. “It was there,” says Joanne, “that I first recognized and learned to harness the power of film to enlighten, engage and empower young people; to foster global understanding, to inspire social change and to cultivate new generations of filmgoers and filmmakers. I have been following that same vision ever since, building film education programs at arts organizations across the Bay Area.”

As the first-ever Director of Education at the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFILM), Joanne built a program that was recognized by Manohla Dargis of the New York Times as a national example, reaching 10,000 students annually. Joanne is especially passionate about media literacy, a field that is growing and changing by leaps and bounds each year. She is a board member of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and  former advisory board member for LUNAFEST—the showcase for films by, for and about women.

“In some ways I feel that I am coming full circle but it’s so much more than that. CFI has such a strong legacy —  an incredible team of professionals, a world-class exhibition facility and so many fantastic programs. With all of this in place, I am excited to build a great next phase for CFI Education.”

CFI Education programs such as My Place|My Story, Summerfilm and the Environmental Youth Forum provide Bay Area students of all ages with opportunities to learn about themselves and the world through the art of film.