B. Ruby Rich

Who is B. Ruby Rich?

B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC Berkeley. She is credited with coining the term New Queer Cinema.

Rich began her career in film exhibition after graduating from college as co-founder of the Woods Hole Film Society. She then became associate director of the Film Center at the Art Institute of Chicago. After working as film critic for the Chicago Reader, she moved to New York City to become the director of the film program for the New York State Council on the Arts for a decade.

A working cultural theorist and critic since the mid-1970s, Rich has been closely identified with a number of important film movements, such as independent film in the U.S. and Europe, Latin American cinema and, more notably, as one of the most important voices in feminist film criticism.

Her presence at film festivals, her film reviews in major national publications, and her commentaries on the public broadcasting programs The World and Independent View, have secured her place as a central figure in the history of what she terms "cinefeminism."