Canadian film industry visionary Noah Cowan, who was a trailblazing force at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as its former co-director and founding artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox, has died.

Cowan died Wednesday evening (Jan. 25) at his home in Los Angeles at age 55, according to Nuria Bronfman, executive director of the Movie Theatre Association of Canada, who was a close friend and longtime colleague of Cowan’s. He died of glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer he was diagnosed with in December 2021, she tells Playback Daily.

Toronto-raised Cowan’s career spanned more than three decades and saw him take on many roles on both sides of the border, including film festival programmer and director, curator of visual art and film-related exhibitions, film executive, and film journalist. He was beloved as a champion for individual filmmakers and emerging auteurs, and a mentor to younger generations of LGBTQ+ writers, critics, and curators.

“He was known throughout the world, certainly in the festival circuits, as an innovator and somebody that would go to bat for emerging filmmakers and auteurs,” says Bronfman.

“He was a magnet for people and he had that reputation, and there was certainly a plethora of filmmakers who I think could owe at least their early careers to Noah.”

Born in Hamilton, Ont., Cowan practically had the screen industry in his DNA. His mother, Nuala FitzGerald Cowan, was an actor and his father, Edgar Cowan, was entrenched in the industry in roles including former publisher of Saturday Night magazine and a co-founding investor of Citytv.

Cowan completed a degree in philosophy from McGill University in Montreal and got his unofficial start at TIFF in high school with a summer job working as a volunteer at the festival’s box office in 1981 before becoming a TIFF box office staffer and a co-ordinator in its print traffic department.

“He was so passionate about the festival and film and knew at a very early age, I believe, that that’s what his life’s work was going to be,” says Bronfman. “He had a very eclectic knowledge base that covered Asian film and independent American film and horror film. He was very well-versed in the art form.”

Cowan began programming TIFF’s horror- and genre-geared Midnight Madness program in its early days in 1988, alongside several other programmers. He then ran the program from 1989 to 1996, and co-ran it with Colin Geddes in 1997.

Cowan also made a mark at TIFF during those years as a program administrator, an international programmer for major retrospectives on India and Japan, and an associate director of programming.

Current TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, who started working with Cowan at the organization in 1990, says “he really thought globally, was very curious about everything that was going on in film and in culture, and brought all of that home to Toronto.”

“The kind of cinema he programmed in Midnight Madness went well beyond what people might have expected,” says Bailey. “It wasn’t unusual to find great new filmmakers coming out of Hong Kong or Japan or France or anywhere in the world.”

Cowan left the organization in 2001 but returned in 2004, becoming the festival’s co-director alongside TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling through 2007, and then the inaugural artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox starting in 2008.

As TIFF co-director, Cowan created the Vanguard, Future Projections and Mediations programs, and spearheaded collaborations with organizations such as the Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art).

As artistic director of Lightbox, he curated exhibitions on cinema figures including Canadian director David Cronenberg, Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini and star Grace Kelly.

“He was a big risk-taker,” says Bronfman. “He was so astute at identifying new talent and trends and what would appeal to an audience, be it the Midnight Madness audience, the gala film audience or the TIFF film-goer. He was incredibly bright in terms of finding the hidden gem and bringing those filmmakers and films onto a world stage.”

Cowan also built up TIFF audiences by educating the public and creating an interest in film, she adds.

“He really shifted what TIFF was when he was there,” says Bronfman. “He elevated the festival and brought it to its place in the world, which was one of the top festivals in the world, and I think that was in large part due to him.”

Bailey says Cowan had “a big dream for TIFF Bell Lightbox, which was to bring the culture of cinema to town through the objects” in exhibits that helped “expand the boundaries of what this organization did.”

“During the time that I knew Noah, he came out as a gay man and was very active in LGBTQ+ film culture as well, and really broke a lot of ground there. I think that’s a big part of his legacy as well,” says Bailey.

Cowan left TIFF in January 2014 to become the San Francisco Film Society’s executive director, which included overseeing the annual San Francisco International Film Festival as executive director. He stepped down in 2019 and moved to Los Angeles, where he launched a media consultancy company.

Film distribution was another film sector in which Cowan made waves. In 1993 he founded the New York-based Cowboy Pictures, which took on artistically groundbreaking and award-winning projects, many by first-time filmmakers. Its roster included I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco by Sam Jones (2002) and Devils on the Doorstep by Wen Jiang (2000).

He also gave a platform to artistically bold films as founder of U.S.-based distribution company Code Red Films. Filmmakers he championed over the years included Gregg Araki, David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan, David Gordon Green, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Guy Maddin, and Deepa Mehta.

Bronfman recalls trying to walk down the Croisette during the Cannes Film Festival with Cowan and finding it “completely impossible” because of the flood of filmmakers who would approach him.

“If you had to be somewhere in 10 to 15 minutes, forget it because he was stopped literally every 30 seconds by either an emerging filmmaker that he had spoken to or had programmed his film, or a friend from the distribution world or another festival colleague,” she says.

Cowan’s career saw him wear many other hats. From 2002 to 2004, he was creator and executive director of the Global Film Initiative, a not-for-profit foundation in New York devoted to the promotion of cinema from the developing world.

As a film journalist, Cowan wrote reviews for international publications, including Filmmaker magazine, where he was a contributing editor from 1994 to 2004. He also had an executive producer credit on Jem Cohen’s 2000 documentary Benjamin Smoke.

Editor Nicholas Davies says Cowan was like a mentor to him while they worked together at TIFF and became friends. Cowan’s film writing “led people to think of things very differently,” he says.

“I think to a certain extent he took pride in being a bit of a contrarian on occasion, but at the same time whatever he said was very well-constructed and intelligent in terms of argument,” says Davies.

“In many ways, I think he was a couple of steps ahead of time in terms of his reframing things in a way that was often more compassionate.”

Cowan’s intellect stretched far beyond film. Bronfman says he was deeply articulate and “knowledgeable about so many different things,” and would light up any room he walked into with his upbeat demeanour.

“He was a rescuer of many, many dogs in his life,” she says. “I’ve never met anyone with such a zest and love of life. And that was prevalent until the very end. I saw him last week and we laughed, we told stories, we looked back on his life.”

In a written welcome message on his website, Cowan wrote that he had “a lucky life.”

“I was among the first to see and write about many films that had their premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival and other festivals around the globe. Later on, I was proud to create unique exhibitions that required extensive long-form written consideration,” he wrote.

“Looking back, I see such a wonderful and powerful cultural universe that unfolded around me — I was happy to have had a few things to say about it all and to be able to share those thoughts.”

Cowan is survived by husband John O’Rourke; parents Nuala FitzGerald Cowan and Edgar Cowan; brothers Brian FitzGerald (Diane) and Tim FitzGerald (Sandi); nieces and nephews Meagan, Brendan, Garrett, Zoe, and Julie FitzGerald; aunt Betty Boardman; and cousins Patrick Boardman (Glynis) and David Cassidy (Yulia).

Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com